Earth's Parallel
by 8th Wonder of the World
Summary: Two girls venture into Earth's parallel, Ruritania, where the Avatar characters live. Kataang Zuko/POV. No flaming. And it's actually better than it sounds. IF YOU READ IT, REVIEW IT.
1. Chapter 1

The Idea

In case you were wondering, the two main characters are actually real people: my friend Emily and I. Also, don't give me any crap about how this should be on FictionPress because there's real people in it, because in case you haven't guessed it yet, this did not actually happen. One more thing: no flames. Constructive critcism is welcome.

And now I'll stop yammering so you can read the story. Enjoy!

I was sitting on the couch when the idea came to me.

I was watching my favorite show, Avatar, and it was probably partially the abnormality of the show that caused my thoughts to be so...much more distant in all aspects than it was in all normality. My family is grounded in personality by traditional values: ever since my royal ancestry traveled over from Germany, where I am bred, we have been a down-to-earth kind of family. It has remained that way for many thousands of years prior to my birth, and will remain so with my children and grand-children and great grand-children and every child after that. In this tradition, also, I have learned that the Levandowskis (my surname) are prolonged as fabulous literary geniuses. (Regrettably, I have not much in this category, thus making every word you read revised by my best friend, Katie, who happens to be rather gifted in this way.) We are also rich, a trait that runs deeper than blood as well.

My father is a lawyer rooted in Wells Fargo; my mother a stay-at-home female with an excess of calm tones and indifference. She is a fragile creature, my mother, and she takes great pride in wealth inherited from her husband and his family. We reside in a large, bright, airy house in a cut-off street in the high rent district. Katie, my best friend, an introvert with a sharp tongue, calls the area that I live in "Snob Hill", which could be partially true, judging on the other people who reside here with me.

Anyway, as a result of my parents' wealth, my family is able to afford several luxuries that are not uncommon in our high society, but must be uncommon when compared to every stage of poverty; this list includes cable television. It was now time for my favorite show, and as a result I was sitting on our leather couch with my mother's renowned popping corn bowl nestled in between my knees, and Sokka's oval-shaped face had just been subject to a close-up for what must be the thirteenth time when the idea came to me.

As I have said, I am usually quite grounded in unrealistic ideas in these matters. Yet something caused me to think of it at that moment; I know not what. I can only suppose. I can suppose that perhaps it was a spur of the moment: a strange, wild moment with my favorite character reciting one of his favorite lines, perchance; or how I was struck by how incredibly average my life, in all of my fabulous past and all-too distant future seemed to be to me now.

There was my brother, John, playing a tunes expected from a techno music geek on the large classical piano in the living room area, my second brother Paul who was making his own Leaning Tower out of HoneyNut Cheerios and apple butter, my mother with her bland voice, her eyes glassy from hours of computer work, and my father absent at work, as was tradition, and I, stuck in a humanitarian rut, simply stuck here with no sort of excitement or danger as was experienced on television every day.

I was bored; I needed entertainment.

Yes...now that I think of it, that must have been the reason why I first thought of it!

Whatever the reason be, I knew that I had to inform Katie of it immediately. Being a daredevil as I have never met before, Katie, at least, was sure to jump at any chance to do something utterly stupid and brainless.

_**Three Days Later**_

_**-o-**_

If I had the opportunity to do anything stupid and brainless, now would be the time; everyone is always telling me that I'm too much of a hyperact to sit still for four minutes anyhow. If they really believe that I've got about as much hyperactivity as rapid chipmunks (which are apparently extremely manic), then they wouldn't be handing me ninety problems in geometry and expecting me to sit there like a good little braniac and just do them like a-god forbid-normal person. I think that they might even expect me to be all cheesy like they are in the educational films they show us sometimes in school, and be all like, "I believe that I understand it now! If the nose of a swordfish is driven all the way into a coral reef, and the duckbill platypus's duckbill is approximately six point five inches, and if you factor the quadratic formula of the squared area of a triangle with one side as x and the other side as x+x, then you will get (2-7.5x)(5-xxxx) and if you then complete the Pythagorean Theorem for the distance that an orange can roll vertically after being catapulted down Mt. Everest by a hunchbacked lumberjack with muscles the size of basketballs that have a circumference of 2.5555555555, then the number of coral reef cell-things killed by the snout of the swordfish will is equal to the amount of square inches that the duckbill platypus's nose would go flying in an atomic bomb explosion. I shall write this down immediately."

It's even worse that I don't even like Math at all. Truth is that I'm more of a literature geek. I might not sound like it, but I'm actually pretty talented with words, and my friend Emily Levandowski is always asking me to "revise" i.e. write essays and prose for her because of some issue about how her royal ancestors created this tradition where all Levandowskis have to be good authors. It all sounds kind of stupid to me, but then again, I think most things sound pretty dumb.

Most things that I don't know about, that is, which is a lot, believe me.

See how it is: I'm sarcastic, truthful, and realistic: I see faults in people like I'm looking at them through one of those really expensive scientific magnifying microscopes, and I face them. That's life. I'm not excluding myself from this, and I can name a lot more things that are wrong with me than right, but that's not so unique among freshman chicks anyhow. See, I'm not what you'd call pretty; I work out. I'm strong. I can be mean when I want to be, and most of the time I do not look before I leap, something that's proved to be pretty hazardous over the years. But then that's life too.

I don't think of myself as really judgmental or anything, but Em tells me that I come across that way, and she's probably right. Em thinks she's all-knowing in the way of emotional shit, and sometimes she is, but not with me.

I say this because, however many times that Em has consoled some random person or dramatically impacted a friend's life or something else she's always claiming to have done, she doesn't get the point that I simply don't think of anything as a serious enough problem to go whining to her about. I don't whine to anybody. I'll complain when I'm dead.

There are a few things up with Em and I despite our being practically inseparable: she's fragile, I'm not; she's soft-tempered, and I'm fiery; she's optimistic; I'm realistic, or as she calls it "pessimistic."

I think that the latter is the one that makes the fire. She's always trying to see the good in everybody, and I think that there's just not good in some people. Or at least they choose to show their bitchy side so much that you're fooled into thinking that they're all bitch. If you ran into some black gang member in the ol' dark alleyway, you wouldn't start talking to him about his inner feelings to try and see if he's got a heart. You'd run screaming out of there hollering bloody murder, or at least any even-minded person would. I would.

That's another thing: she's always getting on my case for stuff like calling dark-skinned people black instead of African American, because she's said they've gone through a lot. I say, so have whites and Christians, but you don't exactly go around calling white people "Caucasian Americans" or anything. Also, some of them aren't even African. She calls me racist, but I've seen directors of movies get called racist because they used black actresses in a remake of an old movie when the original actress was white, so I think I'm going to take her opinion with a grain of salt.

So my point is that Emily's claim to fame is that she's down-to-earth, but I'm not so sure that she really is.

When I got her phone call, I was outside taking a walk around my local lake. The lake, Blackhawk, is surrounded by a bunching of dense forest, and my pop's always worrying about what I'm going to run into there, because my neighborhood's safety meter is dropping like a ton of bricks.

Not joking here; it's getting pretty serious.

Deal is that Pop banned me from coming here, but I come here anyway? Why? For one, I'm dumb and adventurous. For two, I'm disobedient and crazy. For three, I love going there, and there's no way I'm stopping. Also, if he's worried about me getting raped or kidnapped, there's plenty of sizeable sticks laying about, seeing as it **is** a forest, **and** I can do some pretty hot karate. Yeah, I've run into some pretty sizeable characters, but none of them ever bother me. Deal is that guys want to rape and kidnap chicks like Em, with soft hazel eyes and a pretty face, but they'd rather not have their eyes scratched out in the process by some pale bitch that has bigger arms than they do. Pop hasn't fathomed that one out yet. So, no. I don't think that I have to worry about much.

Anyway, so it was at that moment that my cell rang. I don't know why I'd brought it along, because I absolutely hate the thing. My mom thinks that it's "normal" for all fifteen year old chicks to own a pink flip phone. Don't ask me where she gets her info; I haven't a clue. Me being a girl, aged fifteen, I would automatically apply to her little mental picture, causing me to be forced to get this plastic-metallic piece of shit.

(One of the funniest things I do with Emily is try to plot out ways to totally demolish it. Once, I tried putting it in the washer, but it totally backfired: the washer pretty much blew up, all the clothes were wrecked, and my phone came out miraculously untouched, not even joking. There was not a scratch on the freaking thing. That stupid phone is frigging immortal.)

I even picked out this creepy-ass ring tone that isn't exactly my style (but it's more my style than the phone), but it still didn't fly, because the thing looks like a life-size pink plastic Barbie toy. If anything, it only worsened the situation, because I've got this horror movie worthy ring coming out of this stupid little girly phone. Some life, huh?

Anyway, so the ring started its creepy organ playing, and I answered it pretty quick. (I don't want any person seeing that. They might fall over dead laughing; it's happened almost twice before.) Of course, it was Emily, calling me on her nice little navy colored touch screen, and I can tell you now that I knew right off that bat that something- probably pretty epic- had caused her to go completely off her rocker, because she was doing this weird breathing sort of deal, and started whispering right off like she was intriguing about something. Who knew, maybe she was.

_**-o-**_

I suspect that I sounded quite the eccentric, then, breathing as I was and speaking in a low whisper that I knew was ineligible over her less-than-satisfactory reception. I heard her speak, and she sounded miffed: Katie usually sounds miffed whether she means to or not, based upon her severe case of sarcasm.

"Emily, are you having some sort of conniption or something? Girl, you sound like you're dying over there."

Yes, that was the typical Katie: quite lovable, I know. "No, Katie." I responded. "I'm not dying."

"Well, there's a big weight off my shoulders." She states. "So, what's up?"

"Guess." I offer, stating in quite a Katie-like fashion. I immediately recognize this as a brutal mistake, for Katie, along with having a sharp tongue, has a greatly imaginative mind, crafted from years of puzzle-solving and intellectual testing, that former that which she involves herself in almost daily.

"O-kay!" When she said this statement in that voice, I wish I had just told her right off: Katie was going to drive me to the nearest point of insane without ever guessing. "You're in a sexual relationship with Justin Beiber!"

I grimace. "Katie, don't make me vomit."

"Is that a no?" She asks innocently.

This is one thing that is perhaps the only truly critical thing that a stranger should know of me prior to a meeting with me: I despise Justin Beiber. He is the one person that I would never welcome with open arms should he come to me starving or what not, unless of course he suddenly decided to become a guy through trans-gender. It is perhaps the one thing that Katie and I have always been in complete agreement about: there is no fathomable way that Justin Beiber could be a part of the male population. He is obviously a girl with strange hair and a gangster hat. The fact that Katie agrees with me does not prevent her from teasing me about some sort of forbidden sexual relationship with him. This is only one of the traits Katie has that makes me wonder exactly why I'm friends with her. (Other than the fact that her fabulous gift with writing has caused admiration from even the greatest authors in my ancestry, and caused me to sound intelligent in this memoir.) I decide that I won't answer her, to save a sliver of my sanity, and order her to continue without any further mention of the pop singer.

"Shaw, Em. I know you secretly adore his hair." She teases further for only a moment, then returns to her guessing game. "You are secretly conspiring against the President in order to assist the CIA in a plot to corrupt the most secret code that will unlock the cabinet in the Oval Office in which is contained some pretty sexy china?"

As I had said before, I don't believe that any person has yet to have been born with a stranger mind than Katie. "Not quite." I state. "Keep on guessing."

She provides several dozen more of her somehow endearing comments before becoming bemused as to how she hadn't guessed it in the time span of what must be a good twenty minutes, and refused to guess any more. "Seriously, Emily. I'm creative, but I'm not a physic. I have a walk to go on and if I'm not back before twelve, my parents are going to believe that I seriously did get raped or something, and when I come back they're going to be all like, 'Katie! You went walking around the lake again, didn't you?' And then they're going to have to walk with me whenever I go on these little expeditions, and God knows that I need a break once and a while. C'mon, Em, at least give me a clue of some kind."

You should also know that it is so peculiar for Katie to emit such a lengthy and remarkably sensible burst of speech that I suppose it momentarily stunned or impressed me into blurting out my whole prolonged plan. This is the one thing that, in all of my open mind, I had not intended on or wanted to happen. I have always considered myself to be a reasonably rational being (as this runs in my ancestry line as well), and thought that despite the admittedly unusual situation, it would apply here. Apparently that was to much to ask for: I said everything that I had been keeping in reserve. There was a reason for me doing this: even Katie, in all of her...creativity might be doubtful of the truth that lay in my words, both because she knew me as she knew me almost better than she did herself, and because I sounded, most frankly, like a zany person, so unlike my usual personality.

"I've been thinking, Katie: life has become unbearably boring, and I want something new. I want an interesting life, and I want you to come with me to some place you've never been before. Will you come?"

Katie responds in the way that I knew she would in an awkward situation: she, most likely without trying, makes it even more awkward. "Emily? What the hell is up with you right now? You are, like, me at my wackiest, times at least four. Also, what's up with the whole 'I'm-bored-of-my-life deal? Whatever happened to Miss Ancestrally Optimistic and Level-Headed?"

I felt myself flush in embarrassment. I have said this before, and will say it again: I have not been living in Katie's resident small town for many years, hence I was not yet adjusted (to the extent in which life would become more to my liking) to the fact that Katie is brutally honest in every aspect. Thus, I winced at her sharp tone, and found that I couldn't find a strong enough response in me to respond to the fire-tongue that was my best friend. Thus, I explained further. "Do you know what the television show Avatar is, Katie?"

Katie answers instantly, as she loves questions. "Yeah," she says, "it's that movie with all the blue aliens, right?"

I smile, for the moments when Katie is oblivious are amusing to me, for she is quaint and small in these moments, and it is these times when I realize why I am friends with Katie in the first place. "Nope. It's my favorite television show."

My friend seems confused at first. "Oh." Then, she appears to have some sort of epiphany, and her voice rebounds into my ear, remarkably loud for one with a reception as she has on her cell phone. "OH! You mean the one with the people that can punch the ground and make an earthquake and make water spiral things and burn one another's hair off and other stuff! Right?"

I smile a little broader. "Right-o."

"Eureka! I have it!" Katie warbles. "Anyway, so what about this element massacre?"

Katie's frivolity and reasonable composure made me feel more bold, thus I dove right into what I had been planning on. "Katie, did you know that the world they live in is actually a reality?"

There is a dead, pregnant silence on her line for seconds more that Katie would normally fill with words, and then she laughs; it sounds hollow and humorless. "Good joke, Em. What do they teach you in that old school of yours, hmm?"

I pause and wonder how to continue: Katie has not only a wide and brilliant mind, but a skeptical one. As much as she makes stories that are as unbelievable as they are funny, they're never genuine as is mine. How to say it so she won't be estranged; that is the question. "Katie, do you know the story of creation?"

"Well, duh."

"Apparently," I pause for a dramatic effect, "the Earth wasn't the only planet that was created."

"Oh, that's right." Katie snaps, punishing me for wasting her time. "There were those other eight planets too."

For once, I ignore her and continue as if she said nothing. "I've been doing some research on the subject, and apparently that there's a strong possibility that Earth has some sort of sister parallel planet in a completely separate galaxy known as Ruritania. Apparently, the show Avatar was formed by Carter Reed, and after a lot of hard internet searching, I found out that seemingly Carter had somehow succeeded in gaining a first-hand experience with the planet of Ruritania, and the natives that he encountered there went to the making of the show."

Much to my surprise, my description is heavily laden with truth and said convincingly, and Katie's next words are perhaps less disdainfully unbelieving as her prior statement. "This sounds like a pretty huge thing for science, Em. Why haven't I heard of it yet?"

This is a question I had fathomed would come. "The scientists that major in the study of Earth's parallel are considered to be..." Here, I pause for I don't like to insult people that I know nothing about. "Well..."

Katie provides the word. "One fry short of a Happy Meal? Out to lunch? Bananas? Bonkers? Loopy?"

I find myself snickering despite myself. "Pretty much. Anyway, so even when progress is made on the subject of Ruritania is made, no one ever hears about it because there's no concrete proof that the scientists are willing to expose on whether or not the parallel even exists."

"So does it?"

"Yes. And the books that I read on the subject hinted that the scientists are conducting an ongoing experiment in which everyday testing subjects are sent along with a scientist for their guide into Ruritania in order to gain rare first-hand experiences with native Ruritanian inhabitants."

"No shit!" Katie sounds genuinely interested now, and I recall that Katie, though skeptical of many things and not easily convinced, believes that there are many events that occur in the span of the universe that are explainable only by the fact that the power of the universe is so great and mysterious that it can, in all reality, accomplish anything if it so wishes. Luckily for me, she considered my story a contribution to her belief, and that interested her. "How do they do this, exactly?"

That I can answer as well! This is going more smoothly than I thought it would. "When Carter Reed first ventured into Ruritania through unknown power sources, he brought back an array of ancient objects from the planet with extremely powerful auras that were almost more powerful than the most powerful radioactive source on land, only they didn't cause mass destruction."

"Oh no?" My friend doesn't seem to be able to fathom as to how such a powerful thing _couldn't_ kill at least a few people every once and a while.

"Nope." I answer.

"So what does it do?"

"It's an extremely advanced power source that has the capacity to create fantastically complex and almost surreal objects that could never be created with today's technology, and probably not even technology hundreds of years from now."

"Such as?"

"Portals." I answer.

"No shit!" Katie repeats, revealing just how awed she is.

"And since these portals were created by use of items from Ruritania..." I pause for a dramatic effect, waiting for her to realize the other half of my sentence.

"Then...that means that the portals actually lead there!" Katie exclaims, spot on as usual.

"Right."

"Holy shiskabob!"

Holy shiskabob indeed. "These portals provide the only known way into Ruritania, and it is only accessible to non-scientists if you sign up to be a-"

"Lab rat?" Katie offers. "Guinea pig?"

"Experimental subject. Then, you can venture into the portal and enter Earth's parallel."

"Bombing!"

"Uh-huh." Regrettably, then I dive back into my over excitable self and go on yet another rant that is both intensely unnecessary and packed to the brim with information that I would normally only betray within several lengthy paragraphs of speech. "I signed myself up to do it and I also signed you up because I knew that you'd want to come with me and the lab is stationed in southern Minneapolis. The scientist that I talked with said that we have room for one large-purse sized bag to take along with us and his name is Henry Brisigner and-"

"Woah, sister!" My friend interrupts. "Okay, this whole thing sounds pretty cool, but I'm still thinking the whole thing is fishier than a bucketful of rotting fish, 'kay? I mean, I'm just on this relaxing little walk, and suddenly bam! You call me and drop this "There's-a-parallel-to-Earth-called-Ruritania-that-happens-to-be-inhabited-by-cartoon-characters-and-I've-signed-both-of-us-up-to-be-guinea-pigs-in-some-experiment-with-a-portal-involved" bomb on me. Not cool, chick."

I had been dreading this part: the section where I'm actually required to convince my best friend to accompany me on what I plan on being my greatest and only true adventure. "I know, Katie, but you have to try to understand me here. Life is so terribly dull nowadays, and this may be my...our only chance to truly have an journey of our own. Katie, you have to understand; you just have to."

When she speaks next, my hopes are renewed, for I can tell her guard is weakening by the tone of her voice: unsure, but excited. "Man, Em, I don't know. So many things could go wrong in this sort of situation."

"Things can go wrong in every situation," I assure her, "besides, the scientist accompanying us is heavily armed, both with real weaponry and the devices needed for returning to Earth- both in huge surpluses. Please, Katie, I'm on my knees over here."

She is quiet for a moment, then implores, perhaps in a quieter tone than usual, "What about my family? What am I going to say?"

I had forgotten this as well: being Irish, with her temper and family oriented nature to vouch, Katie cared deeply about her family and vis versa. Her two younger brothers treated her like a god, and her parents thought the world of her, and when without one another, they weren't quite as cheery as they usually were. What was I to say on this? "Bring your camera and take a ton of pictures." I offered. "When you come back, you can show them all the things you'd been doing in your time away."

She liked the idea, but persisted to find reasons not to go with me. "Yeah, but what would we say if, say, that one ultra-crazy lady came up to us in a deserted wood or something, and asked us what our-"

"Crazy lady?" I ask, quite puzzled. For you see that Katie's parents does not posses the desire to buy any cable television as my parents have, thus she would only know as much about the show as I have told her, which amounts to very little as I prefer not to speak to her about my home life. It is also that my friend has a way of putting things so that I may never comprehend them.

"Yeah," she responds, sounding rather annoyed, "the one with the insane hair? I think she's the sister of that guy with the creepy eye?"

Ah. "You mean Azula?"

"Geez, I don't know what her freaking name is. Why do you think that I didn't call her by a name in the first place?" I wince, for Katie always says things in a harsh manner whether she wishes to or not, and I have not quite adjusted to this trait fairly yet. "Anyway, so what if she asks us what symbol we have or something-"

"You mean what nation we belong to?"

"Whatever! So, anyway, so what if she asks us that, and I'm all like, 'I wear the symbol of the monkey," and she doesn't like the answer and we both get put in a meat grinder or something? What then? I don't know what the hell anyone's talking about half the time."

That seems a simple problem to solve to me. "Just say that you're of the Fire Nation, and you'll be fine."

"Oh." Katie seems puzzled, but satisfied, and doesn't give any more reasons not to come along. "All right then. Life's gotten kind of boring and I don't want to stand here talking too long because I've got a walk to go on so...we might as well try for it, yeah?"

I sigh with happiness. "Exactly."

"One thing, though." My friend adds. "If I lose any limbs in this portal thing, the second we get there, I'm throttling you."


	2. Chapter 2

The Lab

No one's really been reviewing, so I don't really have much to say other than that I would like for to at least let me know that you've read it. And bear with me; it'll get better.

Katie

It'd been about a week since Emily somehow managed to coax me into running away from home to go step through a portal in order to let some dorky-ass scientists study how we interacted with the cartoonified natives on Earth's parallel, and I would swear on my life that I would trade anything to go back on that. No, not because I'm scared or anything like that; I'm actually looking forward to seeing if this Ruritania place is really the atomic bomb that Em's making it out to be.

It's just because that Emily will not **stop **calling me. It's almost like, every half hour, my creepy-ass ring tone starts creeping itself at me, and I'm forced to answer that stupid Barbie phone. I'll open the phone, and right off, she'll start yammering about how excited she is or how she wants to make sure that I remember to pack something obvious like underwear or she's just calling to "chat" which pretty much means that I'm going to have to sit there and listen to a two hour monologue about the crush she's currently nursing on the one character with the creepy-ass scar; I forget his name.

Don't get me wrong, here, I love Em, it's just that she can be so freaking **preppy** sometimes, especially when she gets super hyped up about something. And since it's clear that she's developed some sort of high school age midlife crisis, and has gotten her wish to do something so intensely out-of-normality that I never would have suspected that Emily had it in her to think of something so totally WEIRD, she is currently at the place on the PrepMeter where the needle is practically off the charts.

Personally, I could care less about the whole experimenting shit and the apparently incredible fact that we're going to be interacting with people that some guy made a hit cartoon series out of. It's kind of the fact that I'm exploring something that pretty much nobody on my planet save for some science majors have ever dared to delve into before now. The idea of doing something that fun and utterly stupid sounds awesome to my dumb adventurous brain, which is probably why I even gave in to the idea of the whole portal thing in the first place.

Which, like I said before, was a pretty stupid decision now that I look back on it. I guess this is why my mother is always saying that I need to get a "fence around my self control until it goes trampling around causing mass destruction." I guess that I should've gotten a fence sooner, because my self control is on a godamned rampage right now.

To begin the long list of reasons of why I'm regretting agreeing to this whole scheme is the fact that we're supposed to pack our life necessities into quote "one purse sized bag" unquote. Emily faxed me this enormous two list page of all the stuff that is "recommended to be attainable in the duration of this experiment." What's really funny is that most of this stuff wouldn't fit into a purse if the purse was as big as a suitcase, like a tent, portable stoves, a cooler, et cetera. Who would even pack that on a regular trip? I'm just going to pack some clothes and a toothbrush and hope for the best.

For another thing, just the other day, Emily suddenly kindly decided to tell me that along with the apparent requirement to pack stoves in purse-sized bags, the scientists think it best that we "temporarily assume alternate names", one that apparently clicks with what parents name their kids on that one planet. She's started faxing me everything lately, so of course, the very next day my dad comes up to my room while I'm reading and flashes this enormous four-paged list of "Appropriate Ruritanian Names" at me. He was mostly mad because it used up like half of our ink supply, but he also wanted to know what the hell it was in the first place. See, my dad and I never keep stuff from each other, but he's read so many books about the struggles of teenage life and all that bullshit that he's always thinking that I'm going to totally stab him in the back and get pregnant with some gang member's baby or something. Which isn't going to happen, but that's not the point; he thought that I might be keeping something from him, and he was right. He usually is. But what was I going to do, seriously? Tell him? That'd be funny:

"All right, Pop. I admit it. A week ago Emily called me and invited me to run away to a science lab where we'll step through a portal and spend like seven days being a part of a super-expensive science experiment in which we communicate with the native people on the planet Ruritania, which is actually Earth's parallel in case you were wondering, and the scientist we're with studies how we communicate with the peeps, who are also all inspirations of characters in a hit cartoon television show. Sorry I didn't tell you."

Yeah. Real funny. I mean, my family's not all obsessed on being "down-to-earth", like Emily's parents are, but they're not going to settle for anything they think is a lie, and my dad would definitely think I was lying, or being a sass-mouth, or he would just call the funny farm.

So, I lied. I said that Emily and I were writing a story together, and those were the names that we were considering using for the two main characters. I said that I was sorry I used up all the ink, and that I would tell Em to just email it to me next time. Now, I don't lie a whole lot, and I don't think I was very convincing, but my dad believed me anyway because he's just a naturally trusting person. It also turns out that he'd read the list of names, and he wasted no time in trying to help me pick out one.

He asked what the story was about, and I said it was a fantasy story that took place in another world, modern day (sound familiar?), and that the character I was naming had a personality that was almost identical to mine. He thought about that for a minute, then told me that the best name for the character would be Cybele Pearl.

Holy God! Cybele Pearl? Really? Who on earth would name their kid that? But the deal was that I was getting a really terrible taste in my mouth because that was one of the only times that I've lied to my own Pop, and I felt like I kind of owe it to the guy to make his opinion count. That and, like I said, the list was **four freaking pages**. It's amazing he even took the time to read it at all.

And so, my undercover name is now Cybele Pearl Sullivan. Joy.

And lastly, Em's probably been going on about my Irish temper, and I won't say that I don't have it because I most definitely do. But I also care a lot about my family, seeing as that runs pretty deep in the Irish heritage too, and obviously I was lucky enough to be pretty much all Irish. I have the ghosts of sunburns past to prove it; my skin is as white as a fat guy's ass because neither of them are made for the sun. Em, being a optimist, calls it "ivory." Blech. It's the color of a fat man's ass. And I'm sticking to that.

Anyway, so it's going to be really hard to say goodbye to my family, mostly because I connect the most with them out of any people that I've ever met before, including Emily. Out of everybody, they're the most like me, thus they understand and tolerate me more than the outside world. Even my two little brothers treat me pretty good; considering that they are little brothers and they only live at all to annoy the living hell out of you. Living without them is not going to be fun, but at least it'll only be for like a week. (That's another thing Em's been gabbing about: the max time we get to stay is a week, which I guess is what the scientists think to be enough time for me to develop lasting relationships with the people.)

That's yet another thing: I'm not really sure about how the people are going to act and look and shit like that. I've never seen the show or even really heard about it, but since Emily would appear to be fatally attracted to this Scarface guy, I would assume that they resemble humans a little. I couldn't see Emily falling for some guy with a goat head; maybe a sexy burn but not a goat head. But I know at least that the customs will be totally wacked, and the people might be kind of old English-like, I have no idea. Maybe everything will be totally cool and they'll be just like regular people are on Earth, but I'm thinking not because Em's hinting that they're really into tradition, and that there are really strict boundaries between people. It's all black and white there; no gray: either you're this or you aren't.

She won't tell me exactly what these traditions are, because she says that she doesn't really know. She claims that the only info that she's been able to get is from the TV show, and the guy might have totally dramatified it to increase the show's popularity. And to that I say, "Bah, humbug!" I mean, seriously, this experiment is supposed to be all focused on personal safety, but how safe can it be if I don't even know if I'm saying something that's considered, like, the ultimate insult to some mega-violent character and end up being fed to her pets or something? That does not sound like fun.

So, no: I'm not really looking forward to this whole portal-experiment thing, but all I've been doing this entire week has been listening to Em gab and complain mentally about the whole thing instead of trying to weasel my way out of it. So I guess there's really no reason to start backing out now. After all, it's not like there's one of those contracts that are like, "If this person dies or is brutally murdered in any way, shape, or form, this company will not be held accountable", aka a waiver form, because, really, if they did, I would back out quicker than you could say, "Holy shaboodle."

And I'm going to hold to that, no matter how much Emily whines about it.

**Emily**

I sign the waiver form in my elegant curving signature, in knowing that if Katie only knew that I hold the safety of her life in my hands, she would probably attack me with a butcher knife. Luckily for me, she doesn't. I fold up the waiver and place it in the front pocket of my travel bag. Truth; I feel reasonably bad that I am concealing events from a person such as Katie, from whom I have never suppressed anything from before in the way of secrets or problems, and now I am keeping something from her that concerns her own well-being, but not as badly as I was anticipating it would feel.

For one thing, I know that Katie is looking forward to going, no matter how sullen she sounds when she answers that funny little plastic-looking phone of hers. Her disposition consists so much of her infamous adventurous spirit for her to turn down any chance to do something potentially life-threatening, and she doesn't need to know about the waiver to know that there's a chance of severe injury. This **is **a science experiment, after all, and Katie is always saying that there's a definite chance of death even when you're doing something totally harmless like talking on the phone. (She says that every once an a while, the electric current traveling to the phone during the conversing process can electrocute the phone it's going into and kill the person holding it. Apparently she saw it on a CSI episode.) If she really believes that, I'm sure she'll forgive me for this.

I've also been faxing Katie every bit of knowledge she needs, sort of as my way of assuring her that I have everything under control and that I know exactly what I'm doing. Of course, I don't believe that she'll buy this; partially because it's a lie: I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing, and Katie claims that she can sense a lie from twenty miles off in a hurricane. Also, Katie doesn't fully believe anything. There is always doubt in her mind about even most completely proven facts, and so then of course there would be doubt in her mind that I am all-knowing about this topic, and any other topic for that matter. However, I'm sure that she believes that I am sending her all the information that I can in order for her to remain safe in her time, which must cause at least some sort of consolation to her, despite the fact that it must lower her ego by quite a few counts.

It seems that, as an addition, she is prepared enough, for it would appear that she has packed her travel bag and actually done as I suggested for once and picked out a replacement name. She claims that her father actually found the fax in the first place and she was only informed about it after he gave her grief about how much ink the printing process, but it turned out that when she gave him an excuse as to why I'd sent it at all, he offered her his two names on the list: Cybele Pearl. She'd hated both names, but she had felt terrible about lying to her father, whom she loves dearly, and had said she loved it, thus making her new name Cybele Pearl Sullivan.

I chose my name to be Astrid Belle; Astrid, for it is a traditional Levandowskian name, continuing all the way from the medieval ages, my mother tells me, and Belle simply because it is very lovely, and it feels nice on my tongue when I say it altogether: Astrid Belle Levandowski. It has a flow to it that Katie's does not, and that is most likely the reason that she despises it so.

But that is very far from what I should be thinking of now; tomorrow is the day that I will be taking my birthday gift car- my newfound Rolls Royce- and pick up Katie, who hasn't had time to get her permit quite yet, to go to the science lab downtown and start out adventure.

I will take my rest now, and in the morning, my own personal escapade, one that I have pined for and fantasized about for years, will finally begin.

Katie

I'd set my alarm clock for six, because that's the time that Em planned on waking me up, seeing as everyone in my family would still be asleep. See, my whole family sleeps until like eleven in the afternoon in the summer. Unfortunately, this includes me, so that I'm subject to the thing where I cannot physically force myself to wake up before the time that I'm used to, since my schedule is that I stay up until twelve and wake up at ten. I also always have to set my alarm at full volume in order for it to wake me up at all, because I sleep like a dead person.

What happened was that I was having a really great dream-can't remember it now, of course, I can never remember any dreams because I've got a pretty severe case of a Swiss cheese memory- but I do remember that it was really cool. And just when I was getting to the really cool part of the dream where everything makes sense and the dream ends- my alarm clock radio starts blaring itself louder that a freaking foghorn at me, right in my ear.

"Today's weather is looking sunny and cheerful, isn't it, Bob?" says the radio bitch, the huge strip-whitened smile all apparent.

"Go to hell." I reply, and smack the sleep button so hard that I bet something cracked inside the clock. Serves the stupid thing right for being so obnoxious. If you're thinking about calling me lazy right now, than I suggest you try and get into the habit of sleeping until like ten every day and then having your clock blare some garble that sounds loud enough to be an atomic explosion right in your godforsaken ear. Not fun.

My bed was really warm and the air in my room seemed to be below freezing, and I knew that I probably wouldn't be this comfortable again for a long time, and I seriously didn't want to have to get up. But I knew that my alarm had probably already woken up somebody in the house if it could wake me up in the first place, and that Em would probably arrive in like an hour and start laying on her horn like there was no tomorrow if I didn't come out right off. And it's not like I could back out now.

So, I just get out of my warm, cozy bed and throw on some old jeans and a T-shirt that I got last summer from some island I visited called Point Royal or something. The lettering on it is way too faded to read now, and, really, I don't really care what it says. My fashion sense hit the fan a long time ago and splattered into a bunch of weird little pieces that cause my brain to think of baggy sweatshirts as a some sort of designer brand. It could be worse. I take a minute to search for my bag before realizing that it had been hanging right in front of my eyes on a hat rack I have near my door. Let's all face it: I'm just not a morning person. I think people who are have something wrong with them.

I trumble down the stairs in a total sleep-haze. It's a god-freaking miracle I didn't fall. I'm pretty sure the sound of one hundred and twenty pounds of pure muscle crashing down the stairs would wake up at least one person. I reach my tiny 7-by-7 foot kitchen and pour myself a cup of coffee-thick, gooey coffee, seeing as I was the one who set everything up to make it last night.

I'm about to traipse out of the house to make sure that Emily doesn't start pounding at that siren of a car horn and wake up the whole neighborhood when I suddenly realize that I don't want my parents to immediately call Amber Alert when they find out that I'm not within a two foot radius of the house. The police might burst in on the portal-thingy while we're just about to go in. Who knows? I'm practically a weapon of mass destruction. If something is going to go wrong in a situation, it'll go wrong while I'm around.

And so, I scrawl a little note in my god-awful handwriting; something stupid like:

Mom and Pop-

I'm going on a walk and won't be back for a little while, so if I'm not here when you get up, don't totally lose your minds thinking I've been raped and kidnapped by one of those psychopaths that you're always watching on America's Most Wanted. Okay?

Love ya,

Katie

And then, cup of goo in hand, I lollop out of the front door, trying not to slam it (which is, by the way, really difficult because it's a screen door and screen doors are only made so that a person can see how hard it can be slammed before something cracks), and sit down on my front stoop to wait for Em's uber-expensive Rolls Royce to come shining it's snotty little way up my drive. To pass the time, I take a sip of my black goo.

The good news? It tastes so bad that it wakes me up almost instantly and I start to dance around like a drunken person and spitting out little solidified chunks of the goo to try and get the taste off my tongue.

The bad news? Holy shit! The thing tastes like godamn animal refuse...and people drink stuff like this every morning? What is wrong with this picture?

I pour the stuff into the nearest plant to get rid of it; the plant doesn't seem to like it either, it just wobbles there on the dirt around the stalk like that goop from that old movie The Blob. Maybe Hollywood should hire me next time they need to make some fake napalm or something. It'd save them having to use the CGI.

I was just considering going back in the house and trying to recreate the coffee so that when my parents drink it in the morning they aren't having seizures over how horribly bad it is when the big shiny Rolls Royce turns onto my street. Em's delicate little face peeks out from behind the partially tinted glass, and she grins, waving one hand in the style of Miss USA. It's probably the only way that she knows how to wave. I flash up my hand for a minute just to let her know that I see her (like I wouldn't notice something as freaking **big **as that Rolls Royce), hoist my mini duffel onto my shoulder and mosey down to the end of my drive as the car sleeks it's way up next to me.

Her pretty, doll-like face smiles out at me from the opposite seat, and I give her my signature half-grin. "You're ready?" She asks me, as if there was any possible way that I could not be ready after she'd called me so many times that my phone's minutes almost exhausted itself. I told her this, and she smiled in a kind of weak way. I should seriously try to go easier on poor Em- she's been living in Beverly Hills mansions over south in California before her father's work forced her to move to this country bumpkin of a state. She was probably all used to etiquette and civility, both words that I just am not familiar with. It might do lil' Emily some good mentally if I'm not as sarcastic with her as I am with my other friends.

And so, I give her a broad reassuring grin and when I slide into the slick leather seat next to my friend, I tell her that I like her shirt. Truthfully, I don't: she's wearing these tight black things on her legs and this super low-cut white blouse. Emily seriously doesn't know the male population like I do: when men see that blouse, they're going to get so excited that after a few seconds of goggling, they need a towel. 'Cause, really, Em's really pretty. She just needs to find a way not to reveal it to the world.

Also, I get the feeling that we're going to be traipsing through woods and dirt and stuff. I think that Em might have wanted to dress in something a little more bumpkin-like if she doesn't want to soil those tall black boots she was wearing.

She blushes a little at my compliment, because I don't give them a lot and she knows it. She thanks me in her shy, kind of annoyingly sweet way and I slide onto the leather seat, sliding around on it at first because the thing is so freaking slippery that it's like someone iced up the seats. Even when I buckled myself in, my butt was sliding around so much that I felt like I was sitting on pure oil instead of some vintage car seat. "Can this seat get any more oily?" I asked.

"I got it in California." She responded, as if that was supposed to answer my question.

"Okay...so is that why there's such a high crash rate over there, huh? People are sliding around like ducks on ice?" So much for saying things kindly. That lasted about as far as I could throw a wrestling champion.

She doesn't respond.

**Emily**

We don't get there as quickly as I had been anticipating we would, seeing as Katie was insisting on stopping at the gas station; not for gas but for a slush. For you see, Katie has gotten into the habit of jogging around her little town, and made the discovery that a necessity of this hobby was something cold after all had been finished. And so, she turned to Mountain Dew flavored slushies. I believe she's been getting one from this convenience stop known as Super America every other day for about two years now, and as outlandish as it is to say, I almost believe that she has become a regular there. It seems like every employee knows her face, for all of them have seen her there at least once or twice.

Personally, I think that Katie is rather addicted to them, but she's always saying that she'd rather be addicted to freezes that to an illegal drug, and she's right there, at least. She wanted to have one before leaving, and was so persistent about it that I eventually gave in. I waited about thirty seconds while she was inside getting her slush, then watched as she came out with this absolutely massive plastic cup-seventy-two ounces at the very least, I would say-and it was filled to the brim with crushed yellow-colored ice. And Katie was sipping almost daintily on the thing like it was a glass of water. Sometimes, I feel like no matter how well I know Katie, there's still some things about her that I will simply never be able to fathom. This is one of them.

So, we set off again, and Katie seems reasonably content chugging away at her breakfast of what she told me was called the Mongo Gulp, and she didn't speak much the rest of the ride over. I believe she might have also been getting brain freezes; judging by the way that she would sometimes rub her forehead as if trying to warm it. I suppose I can't really point fingers: if anyone was about to get a brain freeze, however, it would probably be from this dinosaur of a slush she was drinking.

It didn't take an exceptionally long time to get there: Katie lives near enough to the Twin Cities so that it took an approximate twenty minutes to arrive at out destination. From the way Katie was staring out the window with her eyes taking everything in, and I could tell that she was on the lookout for the lab. Every time we would pass a tall, majestic looking building, she would fixate on it and then shrug when we passed right by it.

It was pretty clear that Katie was anticipating the lab to be large and bright, so I think she was more appalled than surprised when we pulled up to this shabby little wooden structure near the seedy downtown area, but there was really no reason to doubt what it was because of the small, cheap-looking plastic sign that someone had hung on the building just to the left of the door: "Study of Otherworldly Life". There were sparsely few old-looking cars parked in the faded parking areas; one newly parked, I could see, as there was a large older lady with a rather nasty face, decked out in a blindingly white lab coat getting out of one of the cars. She gave us a malicious look.

"Why is she looking at us like that?" I asked Katie, who knew this woman's type well, though to be completely honest I was extremely frightened of this woman.

"She's glaring because the Rolls Royce car is so sleek and cool-looking, and because we're such hot babes." Katie replies, smirking at me. "If I were you, I'd consider that a compliment." I suppose that I must have continued to look concerned, and the woman to look malevolent, because about thirty minutes after she said this, she pressed her finger on the button that lowered the tinted glass on my window, and stuck her head out of the opening. "Hey! You!"

The woman looked affronted. "What?"

"What's with the glaring, bitch? Can't handle a pretty car?" I was shocked by this, but the woman only stuck up her middle finger to Katie and marched her way into the building. Katie laughed a little and drew her head back in. "Easy as pie, Em; all you got to do is face the person and they won't bug you."

I considered telling Katie that such bluntness was, from where I had formerly resided, anything but easy as pie, but thought better of it. I proceeded to attempt a parallel parking job. Unfortunately, that had been the part of attaining my license that I haven't an idea how I even passed, and I almost crashed into the car next to the spot next to the one that I was trying for. Katie shook her head at me, not in an unkind way.

Eventually, I managed to get the car parked in a reasonably correct positioning, and both of us got out of the car, bags in hand, preparing to enter into the sordid little lab. "Umm... Em?"

I turn my head to see my friend standing a ways away from me, her face not entirely as confident as it would be were this a normal situation. I suppose that I can sympathize. "Yes?"

"Are you really sure that you want to...umm...put our lives in the hands of some seedy little scientists and that bitch who just gave me the bird?" I would guess that the translation of this from Katie's language to English would be: I'm frightened. Are you sure that we can't think this over a little more before jumping into it like this? But of course, Katie would never utter anything of that likeness.

"Positive. We'll be fine. They know what they're doing, I'm sure of it." And as doubting as my friend is, I have no qualms about whether or not we'll be safe. The scientists tell me that every possible outcome has been thought out and planned; what on earth could happen?

Nothing.


	3. Chapter 3

The Arrival

**Katie**

I could tell as soon as we sauntered into the place, Em dressed up and looking like a model and me like some country bumpkin, I could tell there was going to be issues between this scientist who the lab was sending in to "accompany us" and me. For one thing, I could tell right as we hit off that the guy was a big fat cockburger: his mouth was big, smirking and lopsided, and his eyes were like godamn beetles. It also wasn't like the guy was exactly going to be number two on People's Most Eligible Bachelors List either. Or even number ten. He was gross-looking. His head was shaped just like a basketball, and his body was kind of like an enormously wide football. He had on what looked like a toupee- and no toupee is a good toupee in my book- and he just didn't look like the kind of guy you'd want to be your guide if you were set on exploring your fishbowl, much less a whole freaking new **world.** Now, I know that scientists aren't all good-looking and stuff like they make them out to be on forensics TV shows and shit, but I was still not expecting this guy to look like Quasimodo.

And the places that his creepy-ass eyes were fixating on when they looked at Em weren't exactly making me all hunky-dory either. I never want a guy to look at me like that: like I'm some sort of fucking piece of meat that he wants to buy. So, anyway, right now it looks like we'll be traveling around some alien planet lead by this fat, ugly, perverted piece of dickweed with less brains than a pigeon. Actually, make that a dead pigeon.

And **then** he comes up to us and starts informing us on everything, like some fat ugly drill sergeant. I didn't really appreciate being told stuff by this cheesedick, but I have to admit that he did say some interesting stuff. First off, he asked for our chosen fake names. Emily told him that hers was Astrid Belle Levandowski, and I when I said that mine was Cybele Pearl Sullivan, the crackhead was snickering almost as hard as any Snickers bar. Jerk. He then introduced himself as the Henry Brisinger, to be called Luther Amos, and that he was going to be our guide for the portal thingy.

Duh...

(I didn't say so, but I thought the whole name thing was pretty stupid. When and if we ever manage to get there without our ears talked clean off, I'm just going to tell everyone my real name to see if it pisses off this crackhole.)

So then Henry Brisinger-Luther Amos tells us that Ruritania has evolved almost completely opposite of Earth. Every part of Earth's uber-advanced technology: computers, housing, television, cooking materials, and even stupid stuff you wouldn't even think of as highly developed at all, like fashion or something; these people don't give a hoot about any of it. Apparently, Ruritania is a little bit like one of those third world countries that people always need anti-depressants over: most of the population has thatched huts, they cook their food over fires, and they wear- this is weird- they wear clothing that represents their **nation**.

I think this is the part where I start feeling clueless, and asking questions faster than the guy could count them off on his stubby little fingers. "What's a nation?"

The guy gives me an are-you-serious-bitch look, and I give him a yeah-you-fat-bastard-I-am-dead-serious look right back; he answers my question. Ha. "There are four nations in all: the Fire Nation, the Water Nation, the Earth Nation, and the Air Nation. Every one of the people you'll meet belongs to one of them."

"Those are the elements," I note, "any reason why?"

Emily gives me a funny look, like she expected me to have done research on this or something. As if! It's summertime; who's going to do research about anything?

He laughs: not a that's-funny laugh but more like a you-have-something-weird-on-your-face laugh. Which, in case you don't know, isn't a nice laugh. "You'll find out soon enough." And that's all he says. The bastard.

He continues on to tell us how we can identify the people of the Nations by their clothing style or something, but I kind of zone out on his descriptions because I've never been into style. What I get from his half-hour long blabfest is that the Fire peoples wear red (yeah, I never would have guessed it) and black, the Earth ones wear green-slash-white, the Water people wear blue (I actually feel kind of insulted that he felt that he had to tell us this), and the Air peeps wear- get this- orange. **Orange.** But he says that we're not going to be seeing the Air people a lot because there's only one person from that Nation in the entire planet. Kind of weird, if you ask me.

He also tells us that each can be identified by their personalities: the Fire gang is all uptight and hot-tempered, the Water ones are kind of collected and family-oriented, the Earth nation guys are really down-to-earth (sense the pun?) and outgoing, and the Air nation people are really **airy**. I swear, my brain is about to blow up out of the sheer wonder of the fact that people from the Air nation would be **airy.**

So ends the description of clothing, and onto the description of technology! This guy sure likes to talk.

The guy explains that, even though in places we are totally ahead in, they're lagging like a two legged turtle, they're mega far ahead in stuff we've never even heard of. They're really in touch with nature, hence the whole element thing, and apparently this also causes special powers and stuff. (He wouldn't expand on that no matter how much I bugged the living hell out of him.) They have potions that can heal any wound, fabulous methods for staying alive in extreme conditions, et cetera.

Apparently, the people there speak their own language, in a way, a language that is basically English spoken backwards, which would make sense because they've evolved exactly opposite of us. But Mister Henry-Luther said that it would be-erm-difficult to speak backwards all the time-

Here I interrupted him. "Excuse me, sir, I said," in my most simpering voice, "but I've actually said the Lord's prayer backwards several times and I can speak backwards English quite fluently." I hear Emily stifle a laugh next to me.

He looks extremely weirded out, which is really good. He deserves it. I have to say, though, the guy stays on track pretty well, because he recovered from that and brought out these two fancy-looking metal pieces about the size of the tip of a pencil. "These are immediate translators. You just swallow it, and it immediately translates your every word to the language of the person you're speaking to."

My God! I don't think I should even begin asking the questions that I want to; we could be here all freaking day. So Em and I just take the shiny metal things and down them like good little lab rats. I don't even feel it going in.

"Okay," the Lard Tub says when we've eaten the translators, "one thing that is absolutely critical to know is that the Fire nation is vicious. Avoid them at all costs. If they catch us on their land, they'll tear us to pieces."

Oh boy. This'll be fun.

"And finally," he says, "there are some names that you need to be able to recognize: Aang, Katara, Sokka, Zuko, Toph, and Azula. Do **not** forget these."

Sure. Like I could forget names like that.

**Emily**

I listen intently to every word the scientist says, and every word makes me more and more anticipant. Though, as a tradition, the Levandowskis are patient and soft-spoken as well as down-to-earth, I feel myself become more and more restless as Katie's questions probe the man onward. At last, his mental checklist appears to have been completed, and he leads us over to a large, very bright and expensive-looking machine. It has a long, thin base that almost resembles a helicopter's landing pad, and there are two long, curved vertical half-arches protruding from both left and right halves of this device. On each of these halves, there are tiny, spike-shaped objects poking out of the pillars every half inch or so. On the left side, there is something that appears to be something like a very large basin that is connected by a long, very thin pipeline.

"What the hell?" Katie whispers to me.

What the hell indeed.

The man gestures to the model. "This is the Solidifier 9000. She's specially equipped to make solid any sort of liquid that we dump into that tub over there." Here he gestures to the hand basin. "In this case, the stuff we're dumping in is basically liquid portal."

Katie then brings up a good point. "But if the whatchamacallit is here, how are we going to be able to get back?"

The guy holds up a glass jar filled with what appears to be liquid gold. "This is the stuff we're pouring in there. There's enough here to transport almost five people. Here, we need the Solidifier to create the portal for us, but, like I said, there, everything is way different. All you have to do is dump this on the ground anywhere on Ruritania and a portal will immediately be created."

Katie seems actually satisfied with that, so the man moves on. He waves to the larger lady we had seen earlier today, and she approaches the sink-like object holding an exact replica of the jar of liquid gold the man had displayed to Katie. She unscrews the jar's top, and promptly dumps the contents into the sink.

I hear the liquid sloshing away down the tube leading to the machine, and all of a sudden there's a loud, very unpleasant grating noise. Katie jumps next to me, and I wince as the sound barrages my sensitive ears. Fortunately, it only lasts about two seconds before it halts very suddenly. There is then a loud squelching noise, and something that shimmers like diamonds begins to form where the tiny spikes are on top of each half-arch. The shining substance then begins to spread downward, appearing in the likeness of rain trickling down a window pane. When it reaches the base of the machine, it quavers for a moment, then steadies itself and is still.

"Wow." Katie says. "You know, it sort of looks like that liquid you use to blow bubbles."

And though it is the last thing that I would have thought of, it does.

The scientist bows to me, and gestures. "Ladies first."

Katie gags.

I hoist my tote onto my shoulder, and step forward to face the shimmering mass in front of me. And though this is clearly no time to be nervous, the butterflies come to life almost instantly in my stomach at the thought of finally doing what I've been dreaming of. I was overwhelmed to say the least.

I glanced back over my shoulder. The man was still bowing, and Katie was making little gestures with her hands that ordered me to move it. So I did, and I stepped forward into the portal.

**Katie**

"Holy turtle dicks!" I couldn't help cussing a little. My best friend had just barely touched the bubble-juice stuff with the toe of her hooker boot when she just vanished: no smoke, no dramatic music, zippo. I turned to the fat scientist, who looked like he was on the verge of laughing about my exclamation. "Is she going to be ok?" Like he'd dare say no.

He shook his head. "But she's most likely there by now, and might go wandering off before one of us can stop her. Go!"

And though I'm not really one to obey anybody, I decided he was right. But I decided that I'd have some fun instead of just putting my toe in the stuff. So, I backed up a little, took a running leap, and cannonballed myself right into the shimmering stuff. I was about to do a war whoop...

...and that's when everything went all white.


	4. Chapter 4

The Wood

**Author's Note:**

Sorry for not adding to the story for a while. I had to go to this sleep away camp that my dad had to stuff me in a bag and hijack me in order to get me to, and I haven't been able to get Internet access for like two weeks. I am deprived. Anyway...

**ONE REVIEW! YEAH! SCORE!**

Thanks so much, Zamaya! Since you're my first reviewer, I'm automatically adding you to my favorite authors. I really appreciate your support.

Okay! So now they're actually in Ruritania, and it's time to start the interesting part of the book. I have some ideas about what they should do there, but I'm not telling any body ANYTHING.

But I do need you guys to help me choose which girl should be the lucky POV that I try to make compatible with Zuko. Knowing each of the girls: Katie as sarcastic, funny, and tough and Emily as sweet, pretty, and gentle, who should I put him up with? Need answers now so I can plan ahead. You can vote on my poll. Oh, and the "neither" choice? I just put that up there for fun. It's going to be one of them. (evil smile)

And now, onto the story!

**Emily**

There are select few ways that I can describe the experience of traveling through the portal, for it was both brief and rare: it was like stepping through a doorway made of pure water, and it lasted for no longer than a split second. One moment, I was standing inside a poorly lit laboratory, then for a moment, everything was completely a totally white as if I had suddenly gone blind, and now, here I am, standing in a forest. Looking behind me, I suppose it would appear to any onlooker that I has stepped directly out from within a tree trunk, for that was what was directly behind me.

This discovered and cleared up, I began to observe my surroundings. It was almost hard to believe that I was, in fact, now in Ruritania: apart from several obvious differences, I was in what appeared to be an average Earthly forest. The forest itself is quite beautiful: it reminds me of a the redwood forests that I once visited while living in California: it is calm, quiet, with pine needles underfoot softening the sound of footsteps, it would be practically identical if not for two differentiating factors: there were no information boards posted on the trees or in the ground as there normally were in every national park I'd come into contact with in my life, and also that the trees themselves were far, far larger than any tree I'd ever seen before now. The smallest tree in my vision was at least two times the width and three times the height of the largest redwood I've ever caught sight of. Also, nothing I could see was moving: there were absolutely no signs of life anywhere, and I was standing completely alone in a deathly silent wood in which the trees towered so terribly high that I couldn't even see leaves on any of them- or even branches for that matter.

And yet, despite the oddness of the absolute silence, there was something rather comforting about the forest. I sensed something in the air that was different from the atmosphere of Earth: this whole forest was completely untouched by man. No tree had ever been cut down, and the animals had chosen to abandon it, if they had and that was the reason for the stillness, they had done it for reasons of their own and not from any doing of man or otherwise.

Yes, there was something calming, but it didn't change the fact that I felt like I was the only being in this enormous place, which a very lonely thought.

It was just becoming all unbearably eerie when all of a sudden the silence was shattered by what sounded to be then, most likely because the silence was so complete, the loudest, most obnoxious war whoop that I have ever heard. Knowing that only one person I know could make a noise so noticeable, I turned in time to see a very bedraggled Katie do what looked like a cannonball right out of a nearby patch of underbrush. She landed on the dirt right on her backside with what looked like a moderately painful jolt. "Oofie!" It sounds like Katie might have gotten the wind knocked out of her, which must take a considerable amount of force, seeing as Katie is always saying that's she's more filled with air half the time than she is water. Nevertheless, she's up a split second, smacking rather viciously at her pants in order to clear off the dirt. "Okay, then...remind me never to do a running leap into a portal ever again or next time I might break-" She stopped short as she became aware of her surroundings. "Woah, Nelly!" She exclaims, maybe too stunned by the enormity of it all to even pop out one of her weird cuss words. "Trees! Trees everywhere! Big trees everywhere! By golly," she puts on a rather unintelligent-looking face, "I think we're in a forest! I guess that Mr. Lard Tub wasn't joking when he said that Nature is healthier here. I'll bet these trees are as tall as the motherloving Burj Khalifa!"

Assuming that is an extremely tall building, I say that I agree completely.

"Man, do I ever wish this thing had branches down here. I'd be climbing up there faster than you could tell me not to!" Katie begins to walk a circle around the base of the nearest tree, and it's far enough around so that I figure it might take her a minute or two to get back, so I settle myself on the ground to wait for our guide to arrive.

He enters in a few seconds after I sit down. Unfortunately for him, his entrance is more like Katie's than mine, and what happens is that instead of just landing on his rear, his rather round-shaped body rolls cleanly for about ten seconds before stopping. Katie must have heard this, because I hear her shout from behind the tree, "Was that one of the trees falling down or the scientist arriving?"

"The scientist," I reply as he heaves himself off the ground and looking around to see where her voice is coming from.

"Ah." Katie reappears on the opposite side of the tree and gives us both the peace sign. "'Sup, dawgs. So," she claps her hands together and approaches us, "now that we're actually here, what's the first thing on your checklist?"

"First off," the portly man says, reaching into a bag that I think might be more that just a little above the size of a purse, and pulls out two small daggers, "I need to give you these."

I take mine without question, as I think that he must have a perfectly good reason for giving them to us if he chooses to, but of course Katie, who loves to complain, crosses her arms and blankly refuses to touch it. "Sir, I do not accept butcher knives from strangers." she says. "And if you really wanted to protect us, you could have created Invisi-spray or something."

"There's a war going on," the man says, "we need this for self-defense."

"Self-defense, my ass." My friend states. "If we really want protection, we ought to be using machine guns or something, not butter knives."

"Your funeral." The man snaps at Katie, but I see him place it in her knapsack while she's looking around the bases of more trees. To tell the truth, the fact that we need physical protection at all is a little disturbing to me, for though Katie admittedly put it far more bluntly than I would have, I was anticipating the protection to be more along the lines of something produced from scientific research instead of just a dagger. I suppose the man is doing it so that we'll be able to seem less advanced in the way of weaponry for sake of our relations with the natives here to be less hostile, but still...

Katie

After the dickhead handed us butcher knives, he gave us each a map that the guy who originally went here made of the Nations so that we wouldn't get hopelessly lost and somehow end right smack in the middle of the Fire nation surrounded by their army. Now I'm wondering why the hell I didn't take an ancient map-reading class or something before now because the thing makes no earthly sense.

Right now, I'm judging by colors and stuff, but that doesn't change the fact that the map doesn't even tell anybody where they are or anything, it just shows where each kingdom is, and that's no help if I'm out in the middle of the yellow area and I go aimlessly what I think is north but is really east and end up in some deserted wasteland. And what's with the ancient Chinese writing? Was this guy Asian or something? At least the map looks kind of cool.

After the map goes into my pack and gets buried under the mountains of ugly clothing I brought along, Henry explains that right now we're on the something-something peninsula on the border of the Fire nation, and that we're trying to reach this little town called something-or-other where the Fire nation's land connects with the Earth kingdom's, so that we won't be in enemy base anymore. I find it a little freaky that we're actually in the Fire place, because nobody's been making it sound very fun so far what with the situations where if you trespass on their land they rip you limb from limb or something, but, like I said, I don't know where the hell I'm going, so I guess that I'm going to have to trust that Henry does. I'm pissed about it though.

Then Henry seems to remember that... holy shit! He is, in fact, in the presence of a hot chick wearing a loose blouse! Hot damn! So, after he whips out his compass and we start walking, he starts helping Emily over every little tree root that happens to stick up in her path, all the time going all like, "Allow me, miss," or, even better, "Doth thou need assistance, fair damsel?" Holy balls. This guy has been watching too many episodes of Two and a Half Men. Although, I have to admit that the tree roots aren't exactly tiny. (They **do** belong to trees that are bigger than a fucking skyscraper.) And climbing over them in those tall boots she's wearing can't be exactly an easy task, but that still doesn't change the fact that I don't want to go vomiting up yellow goo from that Mongo Gulp I had earlier from the sheer pervert-ness of this bastard of a scientist.

Unless I happen to throw it up all over him. That I would be okay with.

What ends up happening is sort of like a never-ending tour: we hike along with Henry talking non-stop the entire time, whether he's saying something to his high-heel- wearing damsel in distress or he's explaining stuff about the forest, which gets pretty boring after a while, because it's actually a forest and not some ancient Mayan torture spot, and there's not really much that a person can say about an uber-average place like this.

And I'm also a little sidetracked. I don't know if I'm going crazy or something, but I keep seeing this weird movement in between the tree trunks: I'll see a flash of red vanish behind one trunk, then I'll look again and there will be nothing there, but then the next second another shape moves, either red or black, but it moves so fast that I'm not really sure if it's even there.

Since I think that I'm probably the craziest person that I've ever met, and I'm both creative and easily bored, I think first off that I'm so fed up with the whole situation that I'm imagining stuff to interest myself, but after like a half hour with the shapes still there, I'm not so sure anymore. I also remember Henry the Lard Tub telling us something about how the Fire nation's gig is that they wear red and black, and that, paired with the thing that they're supposed to be super vicious or something is enough to freak the living hell out of me.

And then I make it even better and start thinking about this movie I saw a while back called The Sixth Sense, which has been the only thing so far in my life that has been able to almost make me piss myself out of the sheer freakiness. See, I don't get so much scared of blood and gore and all the stuff that everyone else that I talk to seems to be having freaking nightmares about. Instead, I get totally sicked out and leave. There was some of that stuff in The Sixth Sense, but mostly it was just creepy and mind fucking, and it made me afraid to walk around in the dark after that, which really sucked because I'd watched it at night without my parents knowing, and I couldn't go upstairs without seeing that kid with his back of his head split open or the three people hanging by their necks by ropes on the top of my stairs or something, so after passing through one dark passageway and almost wetting my pants, I decided to turn on every light in the halls and rooms that I entered, which turned out not to be the greatest idea because it's not like my parents are very deep sleepers. So, of course, I woke my mom up because the lights were flickering on and off in the upstairs hallway, and she's so much of a bear in the morning (I am too, so I'm not pointing fingers) that she didn't waste any time demanding the story.

And since I haven't lied to my parents until that whole thing with the fake name, I told her the truth: that I'd stayed up until two in the morning watching a horror movie and I couldn't go upstairs in the dark because I was seeing dead people in the dark. She actually found that funny, and probably sympathized a little, because she took me downstairs and made me some warm milk and honey, like she'd always done when I was like two or something, and it was a major girl moment.

But anyway, so I started thinking about all the creepy hostile dead people, and that woman holding out her slit wrists and screaming, "Look what you made me do! Why did you do this to me?" And now there were creepy streaks of red and black streaking themselves through the trees, and this was **scary**.

I was getting so freaking traumatized by the creepy smudge creatures that I decided- God help my soul here- to tell the fat pervert about it. So, I did: I turn my head and call back to Lard Tub, who's just helped Em over an especially big root and is now having issues getting over himself. "Hey...erm...Henry-"

"Luther." He replies.

"Huh?"

"I'm not Henry anymore, I'm Luther Amos. We'd picked fake names. Re-member?"

He says it like the girls say it when they mean, like, you-don't-rememba-thaught-whaught-tha-heall? "Yeah, I remember. Keep your pants on, jerk. If they come off, the cellulite might turn into the Blob and devour me or something." Emily looks shocked. She's going to have to get used to me.

He flushes, but doesn't respond. He knows he had it coming.

"So, Mr. Luther," I say, quoting a Superman movie, "I keep seeing these black and red streaks in between the trees every so often. Since you're sort of all-knowing about this big ol' tree-planet, what do you think it is: the Fire peoples, or some sort of big mutant badger?"

Emily gets this mega-alarmed look on her face at this, like she actually thinks that me and my ability to notice the things that never end up actually mattering has finally detected something that's not totally pointless.

"The Fire Nation citizens, most likely." He says, actually sounding like a scientist. How **shocking**!

"Then why aren't we running from them?"

"They're probably not members of the army, because very few people are allowed to be generals, and only generals have the right to patrol grounds so close to the other nations, because they know the land so well. They're probably just average citizens trying to hunt or something." That seems actually pretty reasonable, but there's still something bugging me about the way that they're so fast and limber that I'm the only one that's seen them so far. There usually is something bugging me, though, no matter if it ends up mattering or not, so I just decided put the thought aside for a while.

"Okay, then..." Emily looks relieved, probably because now she thinks that some major tragedy's been averted because the fat guide thinks that the uber-quick shapes I've been seeing in between the trees for like an hour are either a figment of my crazy imagination or some average citizens hunting for nonexistent rabbits. I still think that it's bullshit. Really big, fat, fresh bullshit.

**Emily**

As hostile Katie and the guide seemed towards one another, I felt that he was something of a gentleman, what with him helping me over the exceedingly large tree roots that obscured my path and also calling me things of the likeness of "Miss" and "Lady." I rather liked it for a ways, but I must admit that it did get rather tiresome after around the tenth time.

It was not the only thing that was becoming tired: I was beginning to regret ever dressing as I had. It was not that the forest was especially humid; it was not. The canopy of leaves overhead assured that no excess sunlight was able to get through to heat the area, but I won't pretend as if my feet weren't becoming covered in blisters because of my high heeled boots. Though I never would have before, I was beginning to envy Katie's faded tee and her worn out tennis shoes, for she now traipsed far ahead of me with my leather high heels and the guide, who appeared to be having some problems with respiration, and was almost considering asking her to loan me a pair of identical shoes to the ones that she wore now, for she claims to have an endless number.

Thankfully, about an hour after Katie made her proclamation about seeing movement in the trees, it began to grow shady and colder within the forest, a sign, I supposed, that night was steadily falling. Katie clearly noticed this as well, observant as she is, and appeared puzzled by it, as when we had left Earth through the portal it was early in the morning. As Katie is something of a night owl in replacement of an early bird, she would take note of this change most of all.

And so, after a while of walking in the increasingly chilly air, she turned her head to face the guide and stated her position. "Um, hey, either I'm going into a state of serious shock and my body temperature is dropping rapidly or it's actually getting colder here. Shouldn't we start...like, lighting fires or something? Something campy?"

The man has to take a few heavy breaths with his hand clutching at what must be a very painful stitch in his very extensive side before he feels he is able to answer her. "Campy?" He asks, his voice still a little breathy.

"Jeez, it's not like I go camping a lot. Nobody does it for a freaking hobby anymore, so why should I? Enlighten me on the procedure here." Katie fixates him with what she calls her quote "take-me-seriously-asshole-or-I-swear-you-will-have-hell-from-me glare" unquote. For you see that Katie has many levels and names for her many glowers. A few of them that she's informed me on are: the I'm-not-actually-angry-that-was-just-a-really-bad-joke, the stop-it-you're-acting-like-you-need-antidepressants, the stop-looking-at-me-your-eyes-are-boring-godamn-holes-in-my-skull, and Katie's acclaimed most used, why-won't-you-shut-the-hell-up-already.

The man looks around and seems to realize that it really is getting both more chilly and quite a bit darker and nods his head. "Okay. In my pack, I have three woolen blankets that are specially designed to keep out at least eighty percent of the atmosphere in the outside air, whether it's warm or cold." He removes his bag from his meaty shoulders and removes a few thick, navy-colored coverlets and hands me one. "Here you are, little lady."

Katie snorts. He turns to her and tosses the cloth at her face; she catches it before it hits her head, and promptly flips him off as soon as she does. He returns it, and we all begin to unravel our tightly wound packages. Suddenly, something occurs to me. "Where are the pillows? Did we not pack them?"

"No," Luther answers me, "but you **can** easily sleep on the clothes you're wearing if you remove-"

Katie gives him what is most likely the most frightening look I've ever seen her give to anyone, and says in a voice that even the most bloodthirsty Fire Nation lord would fear, "If you mention **anything** about that, I swear on a stack of Holy Bibles that I will dress up as an evil clown, come into your room at night and chase you around holding a butter knife until you either die from exhaustion or fall out a window and then I'll stuff you in a mailbox and address you to Britney Spears. Comprendo?" The man seemed too shocked to say anything. On normal circumstances, I would feel sorry for him, as he had just been subjected to one of Katie's elaborate death threats, but instead I found myself secretly cheering Katie on. For when Katie made this threat, her major goal was my defense, and I appreciated this. "Er...anyway...there's no pillows. Just thought that I'd let you...um...know. Oh!" He seems to get back into the swing of things as a result of something else he found critical to tell to us again occurred to him. "And there's also the subject of if anything happens to me." This statement causes me to become nervous, not because I had not been anticipating some form of last resort should Luther come into harm in any way. Rather, I had been hoping that the lab would have something of that likeness, in order to ensure that we would not be utterly without hope should we be left on our own. My worries are what on Katie will say on this subject, for she knows not about the waiver that I signed, placing her life and mine in the hands of the lab and I don't want her thinking that there's any chance of anything happening to us.

I shouldn't have worried, for Katie is clearly not very fond of Luther, and talk of being relieved from him seems to actually put her in higher spirits, for she perks up. "Ooh! When will this happen? I want to film it!"

He ignores her, and reaches his hand into his pack, pulling out a small paper bag; to tell the truth I'm almost disappointed at this. In truth, I was expecting something a little...larger.

But of course I say nothing.

Katie

I can tell by Emily's face that she was hoping the thing that could potentially save our lives would be big enough to fill more than a lunch baggie, but personally I didn't really care. A lot of mega-destructive things can fit in a plastic baggie, and I wasn't going to be complaining if the guy actually handed us something cool and techy-looking, like that crazy Liquidator-Schmididator thing that had created the portal. In fact, it'd be pretty cool.

What the Lard Tub lifts out of the bag isn't something all fancy-ish or anything, but it's still pretty cool: a wad of folded green that's almost as fat as his big ol' fist. Which is, in case you don't know, almost as big as a fucking grapefruit or something. I can feel my eyes bulging out of my skull, which has to be dangerous or something because people are already telling me that I've got the biggest godamn bug eyes that they've ever laid eyes on. (Of course, they don't say it that way, but that's the vibes I get.) I've never seen so much freaking MONEY in one freaking place at one time, and even rich little Em, who's probably seen something close to that, seems pretty impressed, though her eyes aren't popping blood cells like mine feel like they are.

"In my hand is five hundred thousand dollars. In the bag, I've got two more wads just like this, so that there's one for each of us. That makes one and half million dollars." Like I couldn't do the math...He says this really smugly, like he knows how cool the number is. "When Carter Reed came here through unknown sources, he didn't have very much money, but what was established between Reed and the natives here anyway was that every dollar of our money would be worth twice that amount in their currency."

Wowz. I am a millionaire.

Then Emily actually asked a question that I hadn't even thought of asking (probably because my brain was numbed by the fact that HOLY SHIT I WAS A MILLIONAIRE SUCK ON THAT BITCHES). "But how will we be able to pay in Earthly currency if the civilians here pay in Ruritanian exchange? Won't we be suspected for fraudulency and placed in a prison of some kind?"

And though I probably would have said it more like, "Well, shit! How the hell are we going to pay if we're in Tree Land and not in SkyscraperVille? Hmm? They probably pay in leaves or something! If we go up to a street vendor and offer him some paper with an dead guy's face printed on it, he might pull a fast one on us and reveal that he's actually a spy for the Fire Nation? What then, wise guy? Huh? Huh? Huh?", she had a pretty decent point.

The guy seems kind of surprised since I'm usually the one who's asking questions nonstop, but he answers it anyway. Probably because he wants to keep up the chivalry act or something like that. Bullshit... "A copy of Reed's money was given was copied by sketch artists when it was introduced and is handed out to the mayor of every town, so if we do get in trouble there's still proof that we're not frauds. But the currency is pretty well know, because the population-"

"Lemme guess: they think it looks cool and they have it hanging on their wall in a frame or something." I cut in. I'm seriously getting tired of the guy talking to no end. He could've told us this in the six-ish hours we spent walking in which all he was doing was calling Emily "miss" and stuff and helping her over fucking logs, but no. He's got to tell us right before we go to bed. This guy needs to learn when to shut the trap, and let me snuggle up with that comfy-looking wool blanket he just handed me. "Jesus Christ, am I ever tired. Can you shut up and let me go to bed?"

The guy looks a little put out with my ending his two-hour rant about money before he could even start on it, but then Emily does this Barbie-worthy stretch-and-yawn, and then says, "Yes, I'd second that." Oh boy. Now she's an old English person too.

But the guy seems to have totally fallen for the stretch, since it almost popped one of the buttons on her flowy little blouse, and so he does the thing that he did with the blankets over again: he carefully places the big hunk of dough in Emily's thin little hand, and totally chucks mine at my face. I'm pretty used to having stuff lobbed at me like that (I DO have an teenage bro), so I just caught it again. Suck on that, pencil dick.

While Lard Tub is helping Emily spread out her blanket on the ground and set up her pillow and all the other shitty acts of chivalry that he will not freaking stop doing for one freaking second, I happen to look up into the trees. Jesus, I don't know why the hell I didn't scream, but thank God that I didn't, 'cause I've got a scream that gives people instant heart attacks even if they have, like virtually no heart issues and sends up birds from the trees like in the cheesy drama movies and I basically sound like I'm being stabbed with some sort of sharp metal object even if I don't mean anything by it. So not only would I have caused the birds to go berserk and all that, but I would've told the thing that scared me half to death that I'd seen him.

There, half hiding behind a tree, I could see the face of some forty-something dude who I definitely didn't know. Trust me, I would've remembered a face like **that**: the guy had like a really hard face (wordy, I know, but hey, I'm no Emily. You want wordy, you go visit Auntie Em), really tan, with lots of creases and shadows on it. Man, I don't know how to describe it. It was just a mega-creepy face. Oh, and I haven't even told you the best part: there was this thick, red line running from the part of his face where his left cheek met his ear all the way vertically across his creepy-ass face, crossing over the bridge of his nose and connecting where his right cheek met his right ear on the other side of his face. And it wasn't like the scar was, like, really well mended or anything. There were those bristly-looking black lines covering the scar that people have after they get stitches. It looked like someone had sewn his skin together using a sewing needle and some iron wool or something.

As soon as he saw me, his face vanished, but I kept seeing it over and over in my mind as I was unrolling the fuzzy blanket Luther-dude had packed onto the dirt ground for some odd reason. I was pretty sure that wasn't the face of any average citizen, no matter how fucked up the Fire Nation is.

I wasn't going to have Mr. Face Scar following me like that. Sooner or later, I'd probably die of shock if the guy keeps popping out at me from the dark like some possessed Jack-in-the-Box, and, man, those things are weird enough as it is. I was going to tell Lard Tub right then and there, because, perverted asshole or not, he was my guide and he was responsible for whether or not I got raped and murdered in the night by a guy with his face divided by a disturbing scar, but apparently the guy was more tired than his blabbering made him out to be, because he was snoring like a war horn when I turned to him, and I couldn't tell Em either because she was doing her dainty little hand-thrown-across-the-forehead-thing, and I didn't want to wake her up. Because, as sweet as Emily is, she likes her sleep, and she will protect it. Had to learn that one the hard way.

So, I made plans to tell Mr. Perv first thing the next morning, and if he kept on telling me that it was just a rabbit hunter or some shit like that, I swear on my life that I will pin his arm behind his flabby back, take that pretty portal juice stuff, and go back to Earth, because I did NOT sign up to be stalked by any creepy war lords.

And that is all I'm going to say about that.


	5. Chapter 5

**General Hai?**

Yesh! Three reviews! Bring out the cake! Bring out the party streamers! Hey, where's the clown? (skeleton drops from ceiling) Oh. There he is. Anyway, thanks for reviewing, Zamaya, I really appreciate it. Although, I know more people than you have been reading, so I'd really appreciate it if you'd give feedback, short or not.

And so far, I've got one vote for Katie on the Zuko pair-up, but I'm waiting for whoever gets five points on their side before I make a decision. (And the race is on!)

And now, let's see what happens now that the two've been introduced to all the creepy scar-faced men and REALLY BIG TREES of Ruritania, let's see what else is going to happen to 'em.

Oh, yeah: and as many times as I mention how interested (or not interested) each girl is in dating or whatever, it doesn't guarantee them the POV that's going to be with Zuko. Could be either one. I FEEL EVIL

Oh, and I should also tell you that the Speed Racer dream that I'm going to mention (don't ask, read) is actually a dream that I had once. And NO I did NOT go to bed high.

And now, onto the story!

**Emily**

I awoke the first out of out little traveling trio, at around the onset of morning, with the section of sky visible to me over the treetops a garish scarlet color. A loud snoring sound emitted from a large, darkened bulk coated by the very comfortable woolen blanket; I knew this to be Luther. Katie slept a ways away, her mass of now matted coffee-colored hair slung carelessly over the ball of clothes she rested her head on in replacement for a pillow. Both appeared safe, and for this I was glad.

There was really no valid reason for this, other than the intuition that I seemed to share with Katie, who had been seeing the strange black and red shapes moving within the tree spaces and had a very good reason to believe that we were in very real danger; I had not seen these shapes and could share no similar feelings in that aspect. Yet dreams had last night haunted my mind: dreams of fiery shapes and creatures that lurked within plain view, that watched us as we slept, and came at such a close proximity so that I would be able to see the whites and colors in their eyes.

I dreamt that they had tended to kneel at Katie's side, and that they made strange gestures to one another so that their words would not awaken us, gestures that, try as I may to remember something from the show that would assist me in interpreting the messages, I could not decipher. To tell the truth, after this extremely realistic dream, I had been a little worried about what would have become of Katie in the morning. Luckily, it appeared to be nothing.

Nevertheless, I decided to awaken her, though I knew from firsthand experience that she was as much a morning bird as an owl is. I went over and, placing my hand on her shoulder, attempted to shake her awake. Unfortunately, though she appeared to be somewhat awakened by my prods, she didn't actually get up from her makeshift cot; she rolls over further away from me.

"Rise and shine, Katie," I say, to encourage her to arise, "it's a beautiful morning of our first day in Ruritania."

Katie pulls the covers over her head and responds with a muffled something that sounds a little like, "Oogh moogh goph." and that's all the response that I receive. At the very least, I know now that this is Katie, perfectly fine and impish as ever. "What was that, Katie? I ask, thinking it only polite to hear what she has to say.

"I said that I'd slept on a rock." She says, momentarily turning her head so that I have the ability to hear her, and then turning it back into it's original position once more.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Luther, who must have heard me rising and has now awakened himself. He approaches his large hiking backpack and rummages around for something inside it. I wonder somewhat what he's searching for, but I have learned from my mother and my mother's mother that to prod and pry as a woman to a man is an act that draws far too much attention and gives off the vibes that you are above the man you speak to. I have been told many times that women exist to submit to their man, and asking too many questions is considered, by my family, to be a disrespectful act; Katie does not seem to have been taught in the same way that I have.

Thus, I remain in my place sitting by Katie, speaking to her. "Isn't it amazing, Katie?"

"Ghma."

"We're actually **in**Ruritania now! We're actually in another world! Is that not just incredible?" The reason that I have not been obsessively ecstatic over the arrival here is that I simply cannot fathom how great this opportunity is. I hope that I will, sometime before my departure, realize just how lucky I am to have been able to seize this situation.

My friend turns her head to reveal sleep-glazed eyes- I believe that my mother identifies Katie's by the shape (almond), the size (large), and the color (a very clear blue) as "doll's eyes"; she is always saying that is a true pity that I wasn't born with such eyes. I must admit that they are probably her best feature. "It looks to me like we're just in some Redwood forest times like eleven. When the hell are we getting out of this godforsaken wood anyway?"

"I haven't a clue." I say. This was probably a rhetorical question, though, so I don't spend much time thinking on it. Katie knows that I don't know any more about the plan than Luther reveals to us, so I decide that for conversation's sake I'll continue speaking of my growing excitement, for I have to tell somebody. "Perhaps we'll meet up with Aang, Katie! Wouldn't that be something?"

"Aang-shbang." Katie, clearly not knowing the power behind the name, rolls onto her back and rubs her eyes with her fists. "Hey, isn't that one of those names that Mr. Luther-Henry person over there-" here she gestures one of her hands towards Luther, "told us to not-forget-under-any-circumstances or something like that?"

"Exactly," I smile, for Katie notices many things and forgets them almost instantly, for she says quite often that a serious case of Swiss Cheese memory runs in her family almost as deeply ancestrally as practicality and tradition runs in my own. Of course, this is not an actual medical condition, simply a tendency to forget many more a thing than she can remember them.

Katie does a little victory war whoop that gains her a strange look from Luther, who appears to be fixing up some sort of very small, makeshift breakfast. "Maybe this place has a cure for short-term memory loss or something. What were the other names again..." She scrunches up her face, and rubs her temples. "Uh...erm...there was some name with something like sock in it..."

Personally, I don't even remember every name that Luther had told us yesterday, so I am assuming it is Aang and his friends. I am about to assist Katie in guessing the names when she sits up very suddenly, startling me intensely; I jump. "Ooh! Ooh! Eureka! I have it! I have it! It's Sokka! Isn't it? Isn't it? Isn't it?"

Startled by her sudden attentiveness that was most definitely not there seconds before, all I can really do is nod. I had nearly forgotten, in the short while in which Katie's voice had been absent in the night, how incredibly volatile Katie is, as more of an unchangeable disposition than a trait of any kind. I don't believe that I'll ever be able to fully adjust to her: she is far to unpredictable for that.

"Yes!" She pumps the air. "I'd remembered that it was too weird for me to forget! Oh! And then there was also...um...Toph, and...Katara! And then...who else...? Oh, yeah! The one named...Azula?"

I nod.

"Wow. I don't think even Cybele Pearl is weirder than a name like Toph." She flashes her signature half-grin. "Okay. I don't feel so bad about that stupid fake name anymore. Anyway, so..." She pauses in the process of continuing her list. "...I think that's it. Am I right?"

I shake my head. Though I don't remember Luther's exact words, I know that there's one name that would be on his list regardless. "You forgot one."

Katie pouts good-naturedly, but I can tell that she's pleased she remembered the amount of names she did, as she's never heard of half of them before Luther's deliverance of his informative speech before the entrance to the portal. "Aw, shit. I can live with one. Who's the dipshit that I forgot?"

I feel myself blush at the thought of the mysterious boy whose vital name Katie had disregarded: I had always thought that, cartoon character or not, he was very attractive. I've truly been looking forward to meeting this person in particular. "You forgot Zuko."

Katie scrunches her forehead, then seems to recognize the name. "Oh, yeah: the Scarface you like so much." She scowls. "Geez, was that ever a face palm moment! My God, you've talked about him so freaking much, that's the one motherloving name that I should've remembered. I swear, I'm a godamn hopeless cheese brain. I better get medication for it or something." Then she glances up and sees how furiously I'm blushing; she smiles slyly. "God, Em, your face is turning into a tomato. Just how hot is this guy?"

I don't feel that I'm at liberty to reveal this, for Katie, though trustworthy enough, finds it very difficult to contain her excitement upon meeting a boy that either is interested in me or vis versa. For you see that, despite Katie's thoughts that she will never be romantically interested in a member of the male species, (she voices this belief quite often; it is a very strong certainty she has) she absolutely adores to play matchmaker. Luckily for me, Luther's reasons for rummaging inside his pack appears to be for obtaining the items necessary for making breakfast: two English muffins filled with a pre-made scrambled egg, packages American Cheese, and bacon, and Katie is far more interested in food than she is in matchmaking.

I feel my stomach turn, for, as I have rich parents, and I normally never consume pre-made or pre-baked items, and have forever found them rather nauseating, but at the smell of food, Katie sat bolt upright; my friend freely calls herself a "walking garbage disposal", a saying that I assume is a way of saying that she'll eat almost anything. "Jesus! Have I mentioned that I'm STARVING? The only food that I had yesterday was my Mongo Gulp! We didn't even have dinner!" This seems to irritate my friend, for in all of her short life I don't believe that she's ever gone without dinner; she leaps up from her blanket and fixates one of her glares on Luther, who's just finished the sixth and final English Muffin. "What're you trying to do, Tubby? Lose some weight or starve us?"

I know that she speaks as such because of her dislike for the man, but that doesn't change the fact that I don't look forward to the times when Katie's tongue turns itself on me. Luther, who, despite his short exposure to Katie's wrath, seems to be adjusting to it as I don't think that I could do, dishes out our breakfast, handing two sandwiches to each of us.

Katie is clearly not simply saying that she's hungry: she's wolfed the two down before I've taken a full three bites; I have been taught that the Levandowski women eat with delicacy and grace, and although I have to admit that I'm rather hungry as well, hunger will not rob me of my long-preserved composure. As Luther and I eat our breakfast, Katie, who's volatile mood seems to have been improved by the intake of food, makes her attempt at conversation.

"So, are you guys into, like, sharing dreams and stuff? I know that some people are, like, obsessive-compulsive and develop clubs and websites about what all the dreams mean, even if they're totally random and pointless, like this dream I once had where I had hijacked my dad's car because I was sitting inside the car while he was outside talking to some friend of his or something, and so I just drove it off, and I'm driving along this highway, and then all of a sudden Speed Racer pulls up next to me, and I'm all, like, "Howdy do!" and he says something like, "Welcome to Bananaland!", and then-"

"My gosh, aren't you a little off topic?" Luther smirks at her.

"Yeah? Well, **you're**a big fat cream puff filled with Smucker's raspberry jam and camel jitz!" Katie snaps back, clearly not in the mood to be interrupted, but apparently still able to create an insult that I never would have thought off even were I off in my own little world. "Anyway, the point is: did any of you have, like, revelations or something now that we've officially entered Big Tree Land?"

Her statement reminds me of my dream. "I have one." I say, and Katie flashes me her rare but warm full smile, encouraging me to share it. Unfortunately, I again share too much in a short amount of time. "I dreamt that red shapes came out of the forest and were examining you."

Luther's head snaps up; I can tell that he's somewhat concerned, but Katie only wrinkles her nose, and says, "Geez, I hope these red people aren't ,like, fatally attracted to me or something. They seem to be following me around like sick puppies. Christ Jesus! Am I popular!" She's gives me a mock salute and then turns away from Luther and me to roll up her blanket.

After her short attention span has again been overcome, Luther turns to me and inquires about my statement. "Astrid, can you remember anything else about your dream?"

For a single moment, I haven't an idea as to why on earth he would be calling me anything but Emily, but then I recall the counterfeit names we had chosen beforehand that Katie had found so troublesome. "No, and I'm very sorry. All I can remember is that red and black shapes came out of the wood and examined Katie."

"Do you remember anything about their sizes?"

The question strikes me as awfully strange, but I don't think too long on it, for as he has inquired, I am inclined to answer without question beforehand. Thus, I wrack my brains for the details for a moment; they come to me with less pain than I had been anticipating, for I always have some trouble recalling dreams. "Yes: most of them were the size of larger men, but there was one smaller shape."

"And did they speak?"

That, I remember. "No. They used strange gestures that I didn't recognize." After I say this, his expression becomes so troubling that I feel that a question or two would be forgivable. "Why do you ask?"

He doesn't respond, but glances around us as a twig snaps somewhere within the wood. I became rather uneasy at this. "Do you think my dream might mean something?" That's the only reason that I can fathom for his acting so strangely.

To my somewhat bemusement, he doesn't answer my question, but instead takes my hand in his and says to me, "I think it would be best if we moved ahead as swiftly as we can." And though it is not exactly the answer that I sought, I must agree with him.

**Katie**

Man, I deserve a Grammy or something for that act I put on back there. When I said that I wanted people to share their dreams, I meant, like, FUNNY stuff, not stuff that could potentially make me wet my jeans. I mean, seriously, Em has to know that being **followed** **around **by creepy-ass men with big fat scars running all the way across their face and other shapeless red blobs isn't exactly fun, and it's even worse when you think that they're, like, creeping up and touching you inappropriately while you're sleeping. That's spelled D-I-S-T-U-R-B-I-N-G.

But I'm seriously too much of a softie, because I saw that lil' Em was almost fainting with the sheer amount of CREEPY, and didn't want her to actually do it, so I put on a mask and hoped she'd buy it, and she did. Whew.

Anyway, so moving on from that, today was actually like somewhere around the same place it was on the Boredom Meter as yesterday was: so freaking burning high that you're constantly afraid that the Meter's going to start smoking and making weird little guttural sounds or something and then totally blow itself up from the unhealthy amount of boredomness. Which is pretty boring, in case I wasn't being clear enough or something.

Mr. Lard Tub must've majored in, like, the apparently fascinating study of everything tree-related, because I swear that he could talk for HOURS and HOURS about a **single tree**. I mean, seriously: as fucking big as they are here in Ruritania, there's only so much you can say about something when it's life consists of growing wherever a bird dropped it or something, growing for like a few hundred thousand years without moving or talking or really doing anything interesting ONCE (which only goes to show you that if I had been born a tree, I would be the most godman miserable creature on the face of the God's green earth, because I can't go twenty minutes without talking somebody's ear off or doing some sort of uber-strenuous yoga pose or something that everybody's always telling me that they broke their femur doing, which is why I even try it in the first place, or having the sudden urge to go set the new world record for the height a person has high-dived off of a diving board into a mosh pit filled with rabid weasels, and that's only **twenty minutes**, so if I had to go **thousands of years** without my yoga poses or mosh pits, I would probably die of sheer depression), and then either rots while it's standing and then falls down on some innocent hiker, or it gets struck by lightening and electrocutes some innocent hiker. And yet somehow, this guy is able to go on and on and on about these things.

Of course, I'm not really listening, so I don't know if he totally trails off the subject and is actually talking about the amount of money a genuine first edition of Playboy is worth or something like that, and I could really care less. But I do notice when he **stops**talking, because for one: there's actual peace and quiet, and for two: there's like an overwhelming amount of peace and quiet in this freaky-ass forest, and since he's the only person who's talking (and also because he will not kindly shut the hell up), it's uber-clear whenever he stops.

One time, I actually stopped and turned around (because of course I'm way ahead of them: I go on like five mile hikes every other day, and I'm better at walking than Em, who's still got on her hooker boots, and Lardo, who's issue is pretty apparent) to see what the hell his issue was, I saw him standing there looking around into the surrounding forest like he actually expected somebody to come jump out at him in broad daylight or something. As if. I'm pretty sure that if the Fire Nation bitches are as stealthy and everything, they're going to plan some sort of surprise attack or something instead of running out at us screaming, "FREEDOM!" at the top of their lungs like William Wallace did in Braveheart, which is clearly what Lard Tub's expecting them to do.

I have to admit, though: that would be awesome.

So what happens is after he's done doing the weird staring contest with the trees, we just go on and he pretty much starts going on about the history behind all the freaking boring trees again, and we just go on until he all of a sudden stops again and does the whole thing all over again. We hike for like an hour. And he does this like FIFTY TIMES.

Eventually, I stop again, because I'm about ready to ask him what the hell he's waiting for, and in the second that I stop, Emily waves for me to wait for her, and even though I'm starting to get really sick of all these freaking trees since they're too tall for me to even consider climbing and I'm being stalked by creepy men with scars worthy of a James Bond movie, and I just really want to bolt it out of here, I do. It takes like two minutes for her to catch up, even though there's like a fifteen foot gap between us max, and when she does, she's panting like crazy. Sheesh.

"What's up?" I ask.

"Katie, I just saw the face of a corpse!" Great. Now she's seeing dead people, too?

"What the hell, Em?" I ask it so much, it's kind of a rhetorical question, but she actually answers it this time.

"It had a long scar running across it's face vertically, and it's eyes glowed like fire!" She shudders.

Shit.

"Katie," she goes on, "I'm so sorry! I didn't know that this would be so dangerous! When I signed the waiver, I didn't know that we would be so much in the thick of danger; I was sure that they were going to do their best to make sure that we remained safe."

"Yeah, apparently being stalked by a bloodthirsty army with only a few daggers on your side is pretty hazardous now, hmm?" I don't ask about the whole waiver thing. I'd expected that there'd be one, because we're actually going to another planet, not some freaking Unicorn Palace, and there's got to be violence involved somewhere. I'd actually be kind of pissed if there wasn't. "I wouldn't worry too much about it, Em. I'm a decent runner, and you would be too, if you took off those boot-things you're wearing. And the good news is that they probably think that Luther is like a big fat butterball of a rabbit or something and they want to cook him up and stew him."

Em does this weird Mona Lisa-like smile that I didn't know she had the physical capacity to do, and doesn't say anything. I can tell that she's really worried about it, but it's like this: Em's sort of weird about, like, tradition and stuff and is always saying stuff about how her ancestors, like, never asked questions and so she isn't supposed to either, which I think is pretty close to being the biggest, fattest, smelliest pile of fresh bullshit that I've ever heard of. I mean, I think that the whole thing with having to have the down-to-earth quality or whatever is dumb, but at least that's not, like, hazardous to your motherfreaking life. Now we're being followed by some weird guy with a big fat scar and she's too fucking afraid that she's going to upset some dead people or whatever to go ask out tub of lard guide what the hell is going on. That's called "life-threatening."

So, I ditch Emily while she's standing there doing her creepy smile, and approach Lard Tub, who's still standing there looking like a fat old statue, staring into the woods like he expects that Paris Hilton is going to come strutting out of there modeling her newest design of lingerie or something, and I do the ol' but still bitchy Super Hard One Finger Jab in the Center of the Chest, and fixate him with my most menacing glare (the Dude-I-Am-Going-To-Fucking-Rip-Your-Little-Intestine-Out-Of-Your-Body-And-Use-It-As-A-Decoration-For-A-Table-In-Some-Fancy-French-Resturaunt). "Who the **hell** do you think you are, bastard?"

"Luther Amos Brisinger." He says.

"Don't be smart with me, you asshole. I didn't sign up for this shitty experiment just so that I could be trailed around and practically, like, molested while I was sleeping by some creepy men who've got it into their heads to dress in all red and black for the SHEER RESULT OF CREEPING THE LIVING HELL OUT OF ME. Lil' Em over there is so distraught that she's paralyzed with a creepy Mona Lisa smile on her face, and you will give me an explanation now or else." One of my better monologues, I'm thinking. I actually got a point across in this one.

"Or else what?" He sneers.

"Or else I'll wrestle you to the ground, knock you out, take the portal juice, and leave you here to be eaten alive by rabid squirrels. And I am dead serious." Take that!

He holds up his hands in defeat. "All right, all right. I think that there's a chance that we're being followed by a Fire Nation army general, General Hai."

"Is he the one with the large scar across his face?" I almost have a heart attack when Em says this, because it's not like she's exactly in the habit of creeping up behind people without them knowing, and it's not like she can do it very well wearing those freaking ridiculous boot-things she has, but here she is now, standing behind and so I wasn't exactly expecting her to totally sneak up behind me like that,

"You've seen him?" Luther-dude doesn't seem too happy about that.

"Yeah, like, twice, Flubber-Man. And I don't know about Em here, but I want answers faster than you can say 'em. I'm getting a little tired of being all uninformed." I snap.

"All that you need to know about General Hai is that he is not a man that you want to run into under any circumstances, and-"

"Yeah, yeah, Lard Tub, I guessed that already from the creepy scar and the fact that he's been stalking us ever since we freaking got here." Frankly, I'm getting kind of twitchy, and it's not because I'm haven't done any productive movement for like three minutes or anything, because even I'm just really restless, and actually don't have ADHD. It's because all the while that Old Man Flubber has been taking his sweet time gabbing without actually giving us any straight facts, I've been starting to see the shapes again, and they're coming a lot more often. It's kind of like they're circling or patrolling around us or something, because I'm seeing a pattern in the colors that I didn't see the first time that I saw them. I don't think that Emily seeing what I'm seeing right now, because she's still frozen in Mona Lisa mode for whatever reason, and I think she's kind of messed up right now. And of course, we have Lard Tub, who wouldn't notice a mad bear until it had crashed it's way right up to him and was eating him alive or something. So, yeah, I'm a little bit jumpy right now. I just want to get over that godforsaken borderline so I won't have to constantly be checking the trees to make sure that no Fire Nation asscrack is deciding that he wants to get more friendly with us or whatever. "Give us the real fucking info already, wise guy."

He does. About time, too. "General Hai is pretty much the leader of the Fire Nation's army. He's second only to Azula, who is the Supreme General over all four sections of the military." At the mention of one of those weird named I had to remember, Emily seems to turn into a pretty bad case of emotional mess-up, and starts bawling her eyes out.

"Jesus!" I've seen Emily cry plenty of times: I'm thinking because another part of being a Levandowski chick is that you have to pump out plenty of waterworks or you're not worthy or something, but I've never actually seen anybody dissolve into one of those weird little puddles of depression that she's doing right now. It's actually kind of creeping me out. "What's got you all teary, huh?" I know, I know. I'm a god-awful comforter. Usually I make people cry even more. But it's not my fault. Emily usually does the whole consolation thing since her aspiration is to be a counselor or whatever. I think the whole counselor thing is BS.

Anyway, Emily manages to sputter out this weird little loop of words that I couldn't make out even if she was using a megaphone or something because while she was talking she was spraying out tears and spit and all that lovely stuff that people work out when they're crying harder than a fucking hurricane dumps out rain. But somehow Flubbs got what she was saying, and says, "Yes, I think Azula might be traveling with them."

Christ. This Azula chick must be some sort of serious bitch.

When Emily starts doing this weird little snuffling thing, he hurries on. "But don't worry about it."

Little late for that, huh?

"We're only about a mile away from the borderline that we need to get to until we're safe, and it's almost all an easy downhill slope. The Fire Nation likes to time their attacks. I don't think that we'll be attacked in that amount of time."

I was thinking that if the Fire Nation likes to time their attacks, they'd already had a whole freaking DAY to plan stuff, but I don't say anything, because Emily looks like she's recovering a little from her waterworks session, and I don't want her to go dissolving into tears again.

But I **do **say, "These Fire Nation cracks- do they, like, set traps and stuff? You know, like holes with, like, rabid pit bulls in 'em or whatever? Or is that, like, way too advanced for them?"

Lard-o seems to think that's actually kind of a good question for once, and actually answers it pretty well. "I actually don't know. I didn't major in learning about the Fire Nation, so all that I really know about them is that they're extremely versatile fighters, and that they're the most unpredictable beings in Ruritania. They're capable of anything until they're proven otherwise."

Okay, so it's a step forward that we're able to go through an entire sentence without totally cussing every swear word we freaking know at each other, but all I got from that was that they're totally nasty. Which I already knew. "So that's a yes?"

"No."

"So that's a no?"

"No."

"So what is that? A 'maybe-no-but-probably-yes' or a 'probably-no-but-maybe-yes', or an 'I-seriously-don't-have-the-faintest-idea-what-it-is?'" I'm guessing it's the last one.

"The last one."

Yup.

"But if we stand around talking any longer, we're only increasing our chances of getting up close and personal with the Fire Nation. Get cracking!" He orders, pointing his big fat sausage of a finger in the direction we were heading before we stopped.

"**You**get cracking, you big fat bathtub filled with flubber." I retort, but really, I don't really have my heart in it. I'll pump out the really tough insults when we're out of this godforsaken forest already and we're in that whatchamicallit town that the Blubber King mentioned before, but right now we're being stalked by some people who want to tear our limbs out for some odd reason, and I don't really feel like being comic relief or anything...right now anyway.

So, I actually obey the guy, grab Mona Lisa-Emily's hand and drag her off in the direction that Lard Tub's pointing at, and after like a few minutes of practically hauling her away since she's, like, as inactive as a freaking rag doll or something, she seems to finally pop out of that weird stage that she was in and actually starts walking by herself.

After a few minutes of trudging along like that, I hear her say in her kind of annoying little timid Barbie voice, "Katie?"

I don't bother turning around this time, and just say, "Yeah?"

"Katie, if we do get attacked-"

"Don't be dumb, Em. We're going to be fine."

"Yes, yes, but if we **get attacked**, do you promise that you won't desert me?" She sounds kind of choked up for some reason.

"Emily, you know that even if we were surrounded by starving grizzly bears and we just happened to be totally soaked in the fresh blood of some sort of warm-blooded mammal, I wouldn't desert you. I've never given you any reason to think otherwise. Don't be an idiot." Right. Not exactly one of those soap opera monologues that an uber-sensative person would have blabbled on out, but it's not like I have the physical capability to crank those out, in case you haven't noticed already. It seems to work for Em, though, because she gives one of her mega-rare non-sad little smiles, and nods at me.

"I would do the same for you, Katie."

Great. So now the basis of our friendship is based on how if we were about to be attacked by malnourished grizzlies while we're covered in goat blood for whatever reason or something, we wouldn't totally bail out on each other. Great...

But what I said to Em was probably a big, fat, not-so-white lie, and when Luther-lard came up to me like twenty minutes later with Em out of hearing range and handed me this weird little whistle-thing that was carved out of some sort of bone, things weren't getting any better for my already pretty severe paranoia. "What the fuck is this little piece of dogshit?"

"A last resort." He said, zapping the sass right out of me. "If we get seperated for any reason, I want you to blow this when you're at wit's end, and only then. It's power isn't destructive, but it's unrivaled." And that was all he would say about that.

The news just keeps getting better and better...

**_End of Chapter Notes From the Author:  
_**Yeah. These are things that I write just to tell you about, like, what the next chapter's going to be about and stuff. It might be worthwhile reading, it might not be. You can decide that for yourself.

_**Next Chapter...  
**_...is actually really, really, really important to the story. I'm thinking that this chapter was really, really BAD, and I'm probably right because I'm not exactly used to writing chapters where my main characters are being pursued by creepy men or anything. Not really my cup of tea. (Actually, nothing really is. I hate tea.) But I'm thinking that this next chapter is going to be a whole lot better AND it might also have some honest-to-goodness gory action in it. You can't beat that!

It's going to start out with Em doing one of her annoying little Englishman-worthy monologues to bring you up to speed about what's really been going on with all the creepy Fire Nation people following them this whole time, and then we'll go back into the actual action.

**_Next Chapter Excerpt:  
__Emily_  
**_I expect that several induviduals whom happen to be to be somewhat more knowledgable in ways of war and scouting would have recognized the many warning signs that had been given off prior to this, but clearly neither Katie, I, nor even Luther have such abilities, and none of these warnings were taken fully into the perspective that it is universally agreed upon now that it was foolish ever to disregard._


	6. Chapter 6

**Author's Note: **Yup. So we're finally at the chapter I've been gabbing about for forever. I'll try not to totally let you guys down here. Zamaya, thanks SO much for sticking with me and being my only reviewer! I totally love you for it! Remember, though: I want anybody who reads this to review it, just so I know that somebody other than Zamaya knows that this even exists.  
I'm still waiting to see who gets five votes first...and I need 'em quick, because we're getting to the part where it's going to matter the most that I know who it is at all. Hehe...Zuko is going to have such a MESSED UP love life either way. I am soooo evil.  
And now, onto the story!

_****__A Slight Change of Plans_

_**Emily**_

I expect that several individuals whom happen to be somewhat more knowledgeable in ways of war and scouting would have recognized the many warning signs that had been given off prior to this, but clearly neither Katie, I, nor even Luther have such abilities, and none of these were taken fully into the perspective that it is agreed universally upon now that it was foolish ever to disregard.

For one, of course, there was when Katie had first noticed the shapes moving within the great trees, almost when we had first arrived. Any person who was in the know about the Fire Nation (again, as neither of the three of us happened to be) would have noticed the fervency in their actions, and the dog like fashion that they pursued us, in a way in which only Azula could spur them on to achieve; Azula on the track of harnessing a very great power, if not more. We held in our possession what was considered in Ruritania to be exceedingly rare and powerful: liquid portal, and, though we didn't know it then, we also had amongst ourselves a power hidden inside a rich maze that not even Luther knew we had with us; they did, and they wanted it. If Luther had noted that, he might have created a portal right then and there, in order to go back and gather the supplies needed to fend them off, at least for a while, but it wasn't as if we could do that now. If they saw us take it out, they would know immediately what we intended, and would not allow us to do it. We would be dead and the liquid would be theirs before we could pour even a droplet onto the ground.

Then, there had been Katie's spying of the General Hai peering out at us from behind one of the very large trees. This was a bold move; almost too bold, we now realize, to have been under the command of Azula. He must have been doing it on his own accord. Hai had been gathering observations about us, perhaps the majority of the day, discovering what each of us were like, perhaps to see which one would put up the most fight when challenged, perhaps to see which among us carried the portal-creating liquid, or maybe even the most weapons. Whatever his reason, the fact that the Fire Nation scouts would go to such a risk as to being spotted in order to obtain something as trivial as close-up observations about us wasn't a good sign.

My dream, as you may have guessed, proved not to have been a dream at all, but a subconscious perception of nightly going-ons I had gathered while somewhat half-asleep. Upon seeing that we slumbered, the Fire Nations troop had ventured out from the surrounding wood in order to take in extremely accurate records that they would not be able to have in any other situation. They had, undoubtedly, uncovered whom had in his possession the liquid portal before I had awoken slightly, and had now moved on to examining, for reasons that are their own and not for me to know of, my friend Katie. A thing that I took note of in this procedure was that they were not fervent and doggish as they were in the pursuit of the portal juice: they seemed almost curious, even a little surprised. They also seemed keen on taking whatever precautions necessary to make sure that they weren't noticed: they used the strange gestures I had noticed, the thing that had so worried poor Luther, for these gestures, though I didn't know it just then, have long been a very high-society way of communication within the Fire Nation's military, and only supremely important officers know of their existence. There was also the difference in the sizes of the shapes that I had seen; there had been one that had been smaller and more petite than the others. This had been the shape of a female, and this also concerned Luther, for there is only one young woman in the history of the Fire Nation that has been allowed to become a high-ranking official in the military, and she is also the most vicious and strategic that they have to offer.

Finally, there had been the very last signal, the very one that should have alerted us the most. Unfortunately, Katie was the only one who had taken note of it, and she hadn't thought to tell a soul until the time when it would have been critical had passed on by us. This was the moment when the Fire Nation officials had begun to move in a patternlike movement. This was a sign that they had developed a strategy of some kind and were now taking out the first of many procedures that were crucial to the success of that strategy. To this day, I still haven't an idea of what this strategy might have been, but I can safely say that it would not have been a very pleasant one. I'm not entirely sure if what actually happened was an accidental occurrenceor just another section of an elaborate plot, but I can safely say this now: whatever they were intending to accomplish, they probably accomplished it.

**Katie**

Now, I'll say right now that I'm not exactly one of those dipshits that believe that miracles are going to come raining down on them like some heavenly sort of hail or something, but I have to say that it must've been a miracle of some weird, kind of stupid kind when we finally stepped out of that motherloving forest and the sun was so freaking bright and happy-feeling that I was practically expecting it to sprout a creepy-ass baby face and start randomly giggling like that godamn sadistic one that they have in Teletubbies or something. I'm not a huge fan of dancing around in the sun all day like some bunny rabbit that's high off methamphetamine, but the sun sure did feel great right then, I'll tell you that. I think it had a positive effect on Em and Lard Tub, too, because Em finally broke out of her I-need-an-anti-depressant-like-FAST stage and started smiling like a normal person again, and even bastard-y old Luther-Henry-Guy broke out into what I guess COULD be taken as a smile-slash-grimace. I don't think that the guy's got the physical capability of smiling.

"We're almost there, you guys!" He says really loud, like we weren't standing freaking right next to him. "We just have to cross that little stream right there, and we'll be in the Earth Kingdom, and safe from the Fire Nation!"

"Shit, and about time, too." I say, but really: I'm happy. It's not like I was really having a whole lot of fun traipsing through a fucking scary forest being chased by creepy scarred-up men, and I'm really looking forward to seeing what time in Ruritania is like when you're not being wildly pursued by the Fire Nation.

"Just follow me!" Lard Tub starts running-slash-jiggling his way over to this wimpy little excuse for a stream (Em's got a puny little man-made waterfall in her backyard that gives off more water than that sorry sight), and I jerk my head at Em for her to come along. We walk towards Lard-o, who's just about reached the stream.

Now, what happened next was actually kind of funny, partially because it happened so fast that I almost didn't know what to make of something for the first time in my life: one minute he was puffing his way over to the puny little trickle of water that he called a stream, and the next minute, there was this huge, round hole in the ground and he wasn't there anymore. My first impression was that he'd fallen into some sort of ditch or something (hey! You would have thought the same thing, admit it!), and yelled, "Hey, Flubber King! What've you gone and done now, created a crater in the ground or something from the sheer weight of you walking? Huh?" But he doesn't answer me for whatever reason, and that's when I start thinking.

The crater is almost a perfect circle, and I was pretty sure that I hadn't seen it there a second before Luther had fallen into it. I also don't think that any freak of nature could have created something like that, so it must've been man-made. But what kind of weirdo goes around making circles in the ground like that? Smells like fish eggs to me. "Katie?" Em sounds kind of worried, and, of course, I can't have that, can I?

"No worries, Em. I'll bet you that he's just gone and fallen into some sort of waterside ditch and is, like, flopping around on his back because he can't get up or something. Just wait here while I check it out, kay?" She nods, and the fearless Inspector Katie goes over to investigate the curious situation once again. The stream's not exactly miles away from where I'm standing, so I reach the weird hole-thing in less than a minute, and man, I don't think that I'm ever going to forget what I saw in that hole.

I was right, as usual: the thing was man-made, all right. The reason that I hadn't seem it was that it had been coated with a covering of grass and dirt and all that stuff to fool the person that stepped over it: exactly what happened, I guess, though probably not to the person who the trap-setter had been thinking would come along (or maybe it was, I dunno.) All that junk was now lying on the bottom of the pit-thing (which was actually really deep, probably around eight or nine feet under), along with about two dozen wooden spikes. I'm not talking about, like, stuff that a kid would go and whittle with a knife or something: these were BIG: like three feet around each, I'm guessing here, and they were all really closely bunched together so that they could all fit in the hole, and man! They were SHARP. (I'm not really a great describer, so think of it this way: you know those old number two wooden pencils that your grandmother used to use? I love 'em, and I write a ton, so those stupid things are always getting all dull and I have to sharpen them every two days and everything like that. And sometimes the dumb little lead tips break off and you have to start the whole freaking thing over again, and all that, but sometimes they come out mega-sharp, and super nice-looking. Those spikes reminded me of a really, really well-sharpened number two pencil point. So, yeah. They were pretty sharp.)

And there was Luther, laying at the bottom.

Actually, he wasn't really at the bottom; he was somewhere around the middle. When he'd fallen in, the spikes had driven all the way through: I could see the shiny little red tips poking out from almost everywhere on his body except his legs and arms (they were just dangling down in the space in between the spikes): his back, his neck, and even his head. The head was the worst. It sort of reminded me of this time that I'd been working at a charity packaging watermelons to send to a food shelter, when all of a sudden, I found this gross exploded one down at the bottom of the watermelon box. I swear, that this was sick: it's little red inside was freaking crawling with worms, and the green skin on the side was all jagged like torn cloth or something. Yuch. That was what the head looked like (only there weren't any worms). The back of his greasy skull had totally cracked open, and stuff that looked kind of like crimson barbecue sauce was coming out of it, and I could see the sticky, reddened pencil tip of the spike sticking out from between this lumpy gray mass that looked like it still might be twitching a little bit. I could see his bag lying on the bottom around the spikes, but I wasn't paying much attention to that right then.

I've seen plenty of way more sick and twisted stuff in movies and stuff, but it's not like I've seen a real dead body before except in a funeral, and that doesn't count because the dead people there have been all prepped and stuff. Also, the movies are just Hollywood: they **totally**undermine it with all their crazy mass killings in all those epic failures of apocoplypse movies and stuff. It's way worse than they make it, because you always know that the people you're seeing die are just actors wearing gross, sticky makeup. Right now, I was looking at something real: my guide, my lifeline, if you will, the only person with the power to take me back home. It's not like I'd know Luther-dude very well, and I know that I didn't like him really at all, but I'd still known him, and for some reason it hit me really hard to see it so plain like that: here you are, he's dead, he got impaled by spikes and now his blood is dripping onto some dirt and his brain is splattered onto a wooden pole. There wasn't even any dramatic music or anything.

I threw up. Don't ask what I vomited because I hadn't had really anything to eat to day except a really crummy English muffin, but I still blew chunks of some sort of weird, watery shit right into the hole all over poor ol' Luther's backside. It's not like I throw up a lot, because I've got a stomach that could hold down a rampaging warthog if it had to, so it added to the utter grossness, and I had to stand there heaving like I just ran ten miles for a few seconds so that I could start breathing right again.

"Katie?" I hear Emily call to me where she's standing a few yards away. Apparently she noticed my upchucking ceremony and all, because she sounds pretty majorly panicked. I tell you, the chick needs to get a hold on herself. It seems like she's freaking out about one thing or another every five minutes. I wonder if she's PMSing or something. "What happened? What's wrong?"

Oogh. What do I do here? Tell her and risk having her totally have a motherloving heart attack or not and lie to my best friend? Ugh. I hate tough decisions. "I...umm...I'll tell you later, Em. Don't worry about it. Just inch your way by this hole here and don't look into it. "

"If you're sure, Katie..." She starts her model walk over to me, and that's when I see them. They're bolting at us from the freaky little alcove of trees we just came out of, and they're moving at four or five times the speed that Em was strolling along at, and they're dressed all in red and black. They're carrying spears and swords and stuff, and right in the front is the creepy guy with the scar that I'd seen before, General Hai, who's doing such a Braveheart-like stance that I'm sure Mel Gibson would be puffed up with pride if he could see that even alien dudes from Ruritania copy him. Man, I don't know what they want from stupid little dipshits like us: all I know is that Em's going to get overcome if I don't do something quick. Luther-dude dying might have caused the whole damn operation to go down, but Em and I are still alive, and I'm sure as hell not letting them do anything to us now.

So, no. I didn't really look before I leapt that time, but there wasn't really much time for looking anyway, since they were thundering down at us like an avalanche. By the time that I'd reached Em's side, she's actually noticed that we were being chased by the Fire Nation, and was freaked out of her mind and screaming like some fucking banshee, but luckily she wasn't so freaked out that she didn't have enough sense to take the hand that I was offering her and run pell-mell towards the stream-thing. But I knew that it was pretty much a bad idea as it was even though it was pretty much the only option that I had, because I could almost feel the freaking breath of the guy behind me on my freaking NECK, whoever that was. I frankly didn't really need to know all that badly.

What happened next was this: we'd passed by the hole without even looking back at it and had just about reached the stream when I heard this little whizzing sound, kind of like how a rubber band sounds when it passes right by your ear after somebody's flicked it at you (this has happened to me more than once, believe me), only it was down near my calf and I also felt like I'd been hit by some sort of little pebble or something first off. Then, all of a sudden, really violent cramps erupted in my left leg. I've had some bad cramps in my day, especially during the-erm-montly visits of my little unwelcome friend, but I'd never felt anything as bad as that before now. I did this weird little choked yelp-thing, and almost stopped right there and dropped onto the grass to rest the leg.

Almost.

In all the times that I've been dissing people and being an all-around bitchy loudmouth, I don't think that I've mentioned that I'm a pretty damn tough customer. My dad's a Navy officer (what I want to be, actually), and he hasn't exactly taught me to have a whole lot of capacity for pain, and even if it's really bad, I can sure as hell overcome it. This was pretty bad pain, but there was no way that I was giving up that easily. So, what I did is that in the second that I'd thought of stopping there to get trampled by the creepy men, I'd let go of Em's hand, but that's all right because I would have slowed her down anyway. What happened after that was that I started running-slash-hobbling as fast as my annoying little leg could carry me, which, despite that idiotic cramping, was pretty fast if I do say so myself.

But then Em had to go and freak out because I wasn't holding onto her hand, and actually stopped and turned around, and totally lost her mind when she saw that I was hurt or something. So all that she did was stand there and scream, "Katie! Are you all right? KATIE? ARE YOU ALL RIGHT?" As if I wasn't standing like right in front of her while she was saying that. What ended up happening was that I sort of smashed right smack into her left shoulder, and actually tripped and almost fell. Which wasn't good, because, like I said: those Fire Nation peeps were going pretty fast over there, and we didn't have any time for dramatic shit like Em was putting on. So, since she didn't seem to get that too well, I told her.

"Shit, Em! Shut the fuck up and just run already! I'll be more hurt if you don't get moving!" I gave her a good strong shove. "Now, MOVE IT!" She moved it, and was over the stream and into safe area in a second, but without me. Because, you see, while I was talking, I was hearing more and more of those whizzing sounds, all over my body this time, and more of the pebble-things came with 'em. And then, right as Em crossed over the creek and I was about to start moving it too, the violent cramps that I'd felt in my leg were everywhere: my torso, my arms, my shoulders, my thighs, my back (and I didn't even know that you **could **get cramps there), and even in my cheek (and I definitely didn't know **that** was possible). The first one was bad enough, so having, like, ten of them really took a blow, and I crashed down like a felled elephant right there in the stream.

"Katie!" Emily was really panicking now, and I probably would've been doing the exact same thing if she'd fell down right before she'd passed into the safe zone. "Take my hand!" It's not like I could really do anything but lay there, because my arms were cramping and I couldn't drag myself or anything, but I managed to raise my hand enough to take hers. Unfortunately, it's not like Em exactly works out a whole lot, and she's really petite, so before I knew it, the other end of me was being lifted up and pulled away from Emily. Looking back over my shoulder, I saw that some random black-clothed guy was yanking away on my legs trying to get me back over the stream, so I started kicking as hard as I could with my right leg (since my left leg hurt like hell). Then, I saw the General Hai-dude raise a really big wooden bow and set on a fat old feathered arrow, and by the way that he was handling the tip so that he made sure not to touch it, I'd say that my cramps were coming from being grazed with poisoned arrowheads. Suddenly, I realized that he was aiming for not me this time, but **Em**. "Duck, you idiot!" I screamed at her.

"I beg your pardon?" She said, sounding affronted. Oy. What happened next was, if I do say so myself and I do, pretty heroic. I let go of her hand and shoved her head down with it hard enough so that she tumbled over and the arrow went whizzing where her head had been a second earlier. Unfortunately, this meant that the Fire Nation guy was able to drag me over to where the other black-and-red goonies were standing waiting, and also have the common courtesy to plop me right down in the cold stream too. Shit...at least I wore jeans that I don't care about.

"Katie!" Emily was screaming at the top of her lungs. "No! Katie! Katie!" Stuff like that.

"Just stay where you are, Em." I turn around and face her. "Whatever you do, don't move."

"How utterly heroic." This bitchy, coldish girl's voice comes from where I'm not looking. "It's not going to do much for you now, though, is it?" I swivel my head back around just as quick as I can do it, and I don't need Emily screaming and crying over there to tell me that the person that I'm looking at is the evil bitch Azula that everyone's so scared of, and I can sure as hell see why. Standing there is a girl who's probably fifteen or sixteen. She's pretty. In fact, she's really pretty, but I'm not going to call her beautiful because I've never called anybody or anythign beautiful in my whole life and I don't really plan to. I've got a really high expectation for real beauty (I'm going to say right now that it's got nothing to do with any appearances or anything) and I think it's pretty clear that this chick's not even close to being **that **kind of beautiful. She's got longish dark brown hair that's all tied up in some weird sort of hun bun that's held in place by this funky little clip-thing that looks kind of like a flame, with little strands of hair hanging down on either side of her face. And geez, her face is **scary**. I mean, sure, it's pretty, but it's **cold**. Her lips were, like, red and sneering and seriously creepy-ass if creepy-ass lips even exist anywhere else but my mind. She's got really shifty and slanted-ish brown eyes, and those creepy uber-thin, curving eyebrows. Her face is really narrow-ish and kind of peaky, but also really well-rounded down near her chin, if that makes any earthly sense. Speaking of thin, it also describes pretty much everything else about her: this chick is lean and mean.

She's also wearing some weird sort of red uniform. She's got this popped collar and some kind of coat that covers only her chest. (GEEZ, I DON'T KNOW HOW TO EXPLAIN THIS! Emily's the one with fashion sense. If I get out of this alive, I should ask her what the hell that thing is.) Underneath the little chest-thing, she's wearing a red toga that goes down to her upper legs with a little red sash around this Barbie-thin waist to show that under all that clothing, she's actually got a human form just like the normal population, and under that she's got-you guessed it-red baggy pants like I've only ever seen Disney's Aladdin wearing otherwise, and those go down to her knees. And **then** she's got red (Yeah, I'm just going to stop saying that it's red now. I think you get the idea.) stockings and weird little shoes that point straight up at the tips. And then she's got the same sort of fabric as the Aladdin pants on her **arms**, and those continue until about her elbows and then she's got this weird nylon-thing all the way down to her palms. So, basically, the only skin that you see is on her face, part of her neck, and her fingers. So much for 'skin is in', huh? Luther **did **say that Ruritania had evolved exactly opposite of Earth. I guess that he meant it.

What I say next is probably not the most well-thought out thing that I've ever said. "Wow, chick," I say, "nice footie pajamas. Did you just wake up or something?" Hey! Don't blame me! I'm used to saying this stuff to people whose arm I can pin behind their back if they try to kill me. I'm going to need to adjust.

"Do you not know who I am?" She doesn't glare, but she's got a stare that could break through a brick wall. "I am Princess Azula of the Fire Nation, and Supreme Official of all four branches of the strongest military on this planet, and you happen to be on my land. That puts you in a rather sticky situation, now doesn't it?"

"Not as sticky as that time that I got a whole bottle of honey poured on my head while I slept." To tell the truth, I'm a little bit scared the hell out of my wits. Nobody'd ever said anything about this bitch being a Princess, here. That ain't good.

Thankfully, apparently she thinks that I'm kind of good comic relief or she doesn't know what footies are. "So, girl, it seems that you do have some fight in you." She almost sounds admiring. Umm...good? I guess?

"Don't call me 'girl', girl." My mouth is saying this before I can think it out. "You're not much older than me." Shit. My big mouth might actually get me killed this time.

"Hmm. Yes. Well, I'm not here to argue with you." She stoops down low next to me. "There is something you have that I seek, is there not? I suggest that you give it to me."

"Has it ever occured to you that I have no fucking idea what you're talking about?" It happens to fast that I don't even have any time to move out of the way: I see a flash of bright metal, and then suddenly my cheek's stinging like hell and something warm is dribbling down the left side of my face. I hear Emily screaming her head off, and I have to yell again at her for her to use her freaking common sense and stay the hell where she is, for God's sake, but then I reach up to touch the sting and my hand comes back bright red. The bitch has sliced my cheek clean open. And, looking down at myself and seeing a whole lot of little red cuts all over my body from the poisoned arrows that just missed me, it's not the first blow she's taken.

I look up, and I see that Azula's face is totally contorted and twisted up with rage and that her brown eyes have grown to about three times their former size and are glimmering with something that I don't recognize and definitely don't like. "Don't patronize me, you little-" Here she calls me something that sounds a lot like she's calling me a dirty whore in some ancient Ruritania language or something. "-, you will show me where the liquid portal is, or I will destroy you and your little fearful friend there."

Now, this is a twist. The portal juice is the only way that we can get back home, but then again, it's lying in a trap filled with huge, sharp wooden spikes. If they want to try and get it, they can be my guest. I've got other things to focus on right now, i.e. STAYING ALIVE. "Liquid portal? Man, that thing went down along with the fat guy in that trap over there." I jerk my head at the hole. "It's laying on the bottom in a bag." Azula gestures for three of the creepy men behind her to go check it out, and starts to circle me like some sort of ulta-vulture.

"So, the man who we had seem traveling with you has deceased, has he?" She continues her little stroll around me. "By way of...?"

"A hole." I jerk my head in the direction of the big fat crater.

Azula checks out the hole that her creepy Officer men are making themselves look busy over and says, "Made by the Earth Kingdom, no doubt. I'll have their hides for trespassing on our land so." And I care because...? "Hai!" She barks, and I swear I jump five feet because the girl's got a big fucking **voice**. It might be the only thing about her that's not really thin. "What have you found?" I wish that I'd covered Em's eyes right here, because Hai reaches down and gets handed something by somebody who **somehow **managed to get into the hole without being impaled, and then holds up Luther-erm, what's left of Luther, anyway- up to the light in his right hand. Man, it's even worse seeing it in the big, fluorescent-ish light like that: the red seems even redder, the wet seems soaking, and the gore seems even gorier. I don't really feel like going into details.

What really grossed me out is that even big dangerous scarred-up ol' General Hai looks uber-sicked by it, but Azula's just looking with a kind of interested look on her face, like she's looking at some fucking sort of antique vase in a thrift shop that costs like a buck or something. And that's when I realize how screwed up this chick is and why people are so scared of her and why Emily bursts into waterworks at her name and why poor old Luther had been so set on "avoiding her at all costs", and why I had to remember her name or die and all that stuff. I hear Em take a huge breath behind me, and then I hear a thump. She's fainted.

Great...

The thump seems to surprise Azula, and she turns around to see what it was, then rolls her eyes and turns back. "Did you find the liquid portal, Hai?" She hollered.

"We can see the man's bag sitting at the bottom of the pit," he answers, "but it's very far down and right in the middle of the spikes. It may take some time to get it out." Hai lets the body fall back into the hole and leans back over to do whatever he was doing before.

Azula doesn't seem very happy that she's going to have to wait, so she turns back to me to pass the time. "I sense much fear in your slumbering friend." she says, and when I look at her I see that her eyes are getting all big and shiny again. I think that happens when she gets angry...?"But I sense none in you. Would you tell me why that is, little girl?"

"Don't call me little girl." I say. "And I'm not scared because I don't know you, and I've never heard of you before now. I don't see any reason that I should be scared of you."

"You have not heard of me," she says, "because you are not from this planet."

Shit...how does she know that? "How do you figure that works out, hmm?"

"Everyone on this planet down to the youngest child knows of my name, and knows well to fear it is they have any intelligence at all. We have seen your type before, in the several persons who have come to study our way of life, and the one man, the first man whom had traveled here through an unknown power source, and we know you by the way you dress, the way you sound, and the way that you act." She leans forward. "I can even recognize you from the way you **smell**." Oogh. That's weird. Apparently she's got the nose of a bloodhound too. She seems pretty proud of her discovery, and struts a little while she's circling me. Damn, that's annoying. "I can hurt you," she says, "I can hurt you very, very badly. Did you not feel the cramps from our poisoned arrows rake through your body so? Did you not taste my blade on your cheek? Have you not seen the broken body of your guide laying inside that trap? You should fear me, girl, and you know this."

"My name isn't 'girl'." I say, probably for like the third or fourth time here. "It's Cybele, so you can stop calling me that now, and my friend over there is Astrid." Azula looks up at Em, who's laying there like a felled tree, and shakes her head in what looks like disgust.

"You Earthlings are weak by nature." She snarls, finally stopping her annoying strut-walk and walking normally. "I can smell it in the air that you exhale, the way that you move, and your every action! So much fear! So much cowardice! It sickens me! None of these humans deserve life, and your stupid little friend-" she gestures towards the utterly passed out Em, "-doesn't deserve to live either. If she wasn't on the property of the Earth Kingdom, I would end her pointless life right now."

That gets me angry. I mean, Em's got her faults but so does everybody else, and in my book, no other person's got any right to end the life of another person, and it's not like I'm totally going to get into shitty political stuff about it, because that's total crapola. No murders: it's pretty simple, I think, and this bitch definitely isn't going to be talking like that. "Shut up, you bitch." I snap. "You're not going to be talking about my friend or my race like that while I'm standing right here. Em-" I stop myself right before I say the rest of Em's name. I'm going to have to get used to this replacement name thing. "-Astrid's a great person, and even if she isn't exactly like you want her to be, that's no reason to kill her. And not all humans are all weak and stuff, you know. We're not all the same."

Azula doesn't seem to have heard a single word that I've said, which kind of insults me but also kind of relieves me. You see, I get the feeling that Azula's one tough cookie, and if she'd caught he stupid little slip-up where I nearly called Em her real name, she might unveil some sort of, like, secret power of the Tough Cookies and totally nuke me and lil' passed out Em over there. "True, little Cybele, you are not all the same, yet you all possess the same amount of fear inside your bodies, thus the only differentiating factor is how well one conceals it." Suddenly, Mister General Hai pops up out of nowhere and looks at me for a minute, with the sort of mildly interested look that Azula had while she was looking at all the blood and gore of poor ol' Luther's corpse, then hands Azula the big old jar filled with the sloshy gold stuff.

"Here's the liquid portal, my lady." Sheesh. If a creepy mean old asshole like Mr. Hai's showing this chick any respect at all, I must be pretty damn right in thinking that she was a serious Tough Cookie. But is it even possible that this thin little bitch could be more sadistic that some middle-aged guy with some disturbing kind of scar? Seriously don't think so, unless this weird chick is even more seriously messed up in the head that everyone's been making out, which is actually starting to seem more and more likely the more that I hear the lil' lassie talking.

Then, she does something that even dumb old me wouldn't have done if I was in Azula's situation, and totally snatches the mini pot from the creepy dude and snaps, "Idiotic simpleton! You couldn't have left me waiting any longer, could you? If my father didn't think you so accomplished in these ways, I would have you out of my way quicker than you could snap your fingers. Any man under my command must be both spry and in his prime, and you are clearly very far from being either of these." Man, I thought that she was a goner for sure or something, but Hai just stood there and soaked it all up like some freaking human sponge or something, though I saw his big meaty fists clenching in serious pissiness. I'm telling you, that bitch is totally going to get it one of these days. Azula stares at the thing with the her eyes all creepy and huge and sparkly with that weird look that seriously freaks me out, and sort of growls, "Finally! The power is in my hands!" Control addict much? I think so, yeah. After like ten minutes of gloating over that puny little jar, most of which I seriously zone out on, because I'm already pretty convinced that this lady is kinda physco, and most of the stuff that she says is only going to kind of make me piss myself, though luckily she wouldn't notice because my pants are already so wet that it looks like I accidentially sat down on a toilet when the seat was up and my jeans were still on for whatever reason. I speak from experience here: it's **not **fun. Then, she tucks the jar of what is the only way of my getting home into that coat thingy that covers only her chest (if anyone knows what the hell this thingamajig is called, speak up now), and smiles at me, but it's a really arctic-looking smile. Seriously. I can literally feel the icy winds, like, blowing out at me. "And there goes your little portal home, I suppose."

Bitch. "I'll get it back from you." I snarled in my most bad-ass voice. "I'm not scared of you and you know it. I will hunt you down and take it back from you, and pry it from your cold, dead fingers if I have to." You see, not all my threats are all cushy and funny and stuff. I can really scare people when I want to, and I've done it once or twice in my life, but I've never met anyone who deserved it more than this looney bitch. "I don't have any fear." Hell, that's not true and she knows it but I might as well make an empty statement while I'm busy making life threats, right? Two in one sort of thing?

Then she leans in close, and I get kind of fidgety. I like my Personal Bubble space, and right now she's violating a few of my little rule-things for the Bubble of Spaciness. "You conceal it well, Cybele, but that is not the only thing that you conceal. Your power is not only skin deep in the dagger you wield."

What the SHIDOODLE? The longer that this chick talks, it seems like the stuff she talks about just keeps on getting more and more poetic, and God knows I'm not a poet. Come on, here! She hits me with poisoned arrows that give me bad cramps, she slices my cheek open, and now she's saying that I'm, like, special and unqiue and powerful or something. This chick needs to make up her freaking mind already. I think it might be time for me to make like an amoeba and split, or at least roll over the border or something so she'll stop circling me already. I'm getting dizzy. "You've got the wrong Cybele." I say, and start to slowly inch my way backwards whenever she's on my left or right side and looking away from me or whatever. "I'm not powerful." Geez, can my ass move any slower here? I feel like a clam or something else that moves slower that the speed of a freaking crippled turtle or whatever. Luckily, like I said: the stream isn't exactly huge, and eventually my butt's about three inches deep in godamn FREEZING cold water that's causing gross little goosebumps to sprout up all over my crotch. GROSS.

"Yes." I look at Azula, and see that her eyes are big and circular and shiny and weird all over again, and her face is even colder than the time when she was talking about the portal juice stuff. She leans even closer, so that her freaking thin nose is almost touching my stubby one. I swear, that nose could slice my cute little freckled one right in half if she wanted to: the thing is like a freaking butcher knife or something. "You are." I see a soft blue light down below near my hands light up, and all of a sudden, she's pinned me right in the water with her teeth bared and in her palm is a glowing ball of blue fire, only it doesn't seem to be hurting her at all or anything, which is REALLY weird, because my daffy science teacher is always stressing how the **red **fire only reaches around 50,000 degrees Farenheit (which seemed like a whole lot to me at the time), but THEN she tells us that **blue** fire can reach the heat of the sun's core. Which is pretty freaking hot. So, for about a split second, I didn't know what the hell was going on, and then something clicked.

Azula was the Princess of the **FIRE NATION**, and she could summon up **FIRE**. I'm having a total AHA! moment. Of course, the AHA! moment wasn't doing much for me right then: my only reinforcement had fainted (and even if she was awake, all she would've done was stand there and scream like some godamn banshee) and I was surrounded by creepy Fire Nation goons and some insane Princess who happened to be able to control blue fire was about to burn me to a crisp or something. That waiver's going to be needed pretty soon now, I'm thinking.

But what happens is really weird: she sticks her hand right smack onto my rib cage, and it hurts like hell...no...worse than hell. I feel as if my whole body is being licked and consumed by the fire that's on my rib, and it HURTS REALLY BADLY. Being burned alive isn't a pleasant feeling, in case you didn't know. But it only lasts for a split second, and then I feel as if a small warmth is laying curled up on my chest, like some sort of little furry animal or something. It's weird, but I kind of like it, but that only lasts for like a second too.

Then, I'm back to being normal Katie, without the insane burning and hurt and all that shit, but also without the feeling of a puffy little rabbit-thing laying on my chest and my shirt is charred and burned around one little area of my torso, but the skin underneath doesn't look hurt at all, and I'm sitting cold and wet in that godforsaken stream, gasping for breath for some reason. It's a minute before I realize that Azula must've dunked me under or something, because my hair is sopping. The Almighty Bitch herself is standing up with a **mega**scary look: now she's got this creepy Chucky-the-Possessed-Doll grin along with the weird eye thing. "It worked!" She's pretty much shrieking it, and it seems like she's not the only one who's really excited: all of her goonies are running around like chickens with their heads cut off or something, even the creepy old Hai-man.

I don't know what the hell they're talking about, and it's probably got something to do with the weird thing that I just went through, but honestly I don't care if they just changed me into an oversized foaming chipmunk. I'm out of here. I leap up from the stream and dash it to the other side of the border. It takes Azula a second or two to realize that I've split like a banana peel, and when she does, she gives this...man, I don't know how to describe it...she kind of did this weird scream-slash-howl thing that I'd think a wolf would do, but definately not any person, and starts calling me all these nasty-sounding names that I don't recognize for the life of me, and don't really care to know the definition of all that much. I grab Em and sling her arm over my shoulder and trudge my way off, with a lunatical Princess standing in the stream behind me as far as she dares to go screaming her lungs out at me.

Shit. When Em signed that freaking waiver, I didn't think that we'd actually be looking danger in the face like that. Right now, I don't even have any freaking capacity for pumping out any nasty cuss words or anything like that, because there basically is, like, no freaking way to make light of the situation: our guide is dead, we're totally lost without any food or anything with only this freaking unreadable map to tell us where to go, and we don't even know where that is, an evil Princess who can control fire just did some weird sort of experiment-thing on me that made me feel like I was burning in a crock pot, then like I had a little bunny sleeping on my rib cage, and now her and her manical army of creepos are after me and my best friend who's currently passed out and also a lot heavier than she looks, our only way home just got taken by the same evil Princess who made me feel like I was the bedding for some kind of soft baby mammal, and I don't think 'please' is going to cut it this time, because I just totally made her more angry that a freaking malignant two-ton crocodile who hadn't eaten in a week by running off like a smart little schmuck, and unless I figure out a way to either get that jar back from her or get some more somewhere, Em and I are stuck in Tree-land, where people happen to be able to control the elements, my cheek is gashed open, I am soaking wet and **freezing**, my shirt is all charred up, I have cuts from poisoned arrows all over my body, and I proabably look like some sort of crazy hobo.

Great. All of my resources just got impaled along with Luther back there in the crazy hole-deal, and even though I didn't really have any other chance to get the hell out of the godamn Fire place, I just totally lost any chances of getting them back, because the Ultimate Bitch is probably going to have, like, scouts posted up there 24/7 now watching for me, only I don't know why the hell she would care about the whole 'pain-and-bunny' thing so much, and why she even did it in the first place, and WHAT on earth just happened to me.

I have probably never been in a situation that's any more GAY this.

**_End of Chapter Notes_**

Geez, that chapter was fun to write! Again, probably not the best thing ever written, but I'm still having a lot of fun with this! So, yeah: what the hell did Azula do to Katie back there? I'd like for you to know, but...I think that I'll make you keep on reading. Hehe. So, yeah, now Luther is dead. As mean as it sounds, no real loss in character there, but now Katie and Em are stuck in a pretty bad situation: no portal juice, no food, Azula's gone nutty and is chasing after them like a rabid dog, etc. At least they have money. But they're going to need a lot more than just money, aren't they?

**_Next Chapter..._**

...is where they finally arrive in the Earth Kindom-ly city that they were trying to get to before that whole unforunate thing with Luther falling in the spiky pit and all that: Gaoling, where they basically get their first ideas of what it's like to be in Ruritania when you're **not**being tailed around by Azula all day. They also have to figure out how to blend in with their surroundings: I mean, seriously, you might have noticed that people in Ruritania don't exactly dress in hooker boots, AND Katie got pretty scratched up and stuff during that whole Azula thing, and she smells like wet dog because of that stupid stream, and people in Ruritania don't like the smell of wet dog, so they have to do something about all that. They might also meet up with some pretty major characters who are visiting the town (cough cough GAANG cough cough). I should probably warn you that I can't really establish any of them as major characters in Katie or Em's lives until I know who Zuko is going to end up with, though, so rack up the votes on my poll, or by comment, or whatever. As long as I know 'em.

**_Next Chapter Excerpt:_**

**Katie**

While fashion-savvy Em was milling around all the weird kind of shopping racks that they had in that awkward little overpriced shop-deal that we were spending some of the dough that poor ol' Luther gave to us in case we got ourselves into a pickle. I'm guessing he didn't think that we'd be in such a big far garlic dill as this one, but, anyway, we've got a serious issue here, and it's not because of losing the portal juice and all that. **I HATE SHOPPING**. With a passion. Em's piled up to her neck with all this mega-flashy stuff that's kind of like the stuff that I'd seen Azula wearing- not EXACTLY like it, of course, or otherwise we'd probably have been ambushed by an angry mob accusing us of being spies for the Fire Nation or something by now. As for me, I was looking for food: my stomach comes before my clothes. And, boy, did they have a lot of food, and most of it I'd never seen before! It was AWESOME! There was **lemur brain, **sparrow liver, a kind of sauce squeezed from the bones of chickens, a kind of fungus from a kind of corn that can be put on salads and stuff, live octopus (I mean, like, you EAT IT WHILE IT'S ALIVE), bird's nest soup, the cooked fetus of a duck egg, coffee made from shit-not joking: it's from this cute little animal that's called a civet that I have never ever seen or heard of before now-, and cheese that's apparently from the milk some kind of winged bison. There was even this weird sort of thing made out of -get this- grass! It was all packed up and baked along with yeast and stuff so that it looked and tasted a lot like bread! BREAD! I'm loving this place.

The only kind of awkward thing was that I saw this random kind dressed in an orange toga picking out the weird fungus thing, and he had this tattoo of a blue arrow running backwards over his bald head. He looked kind of like a mini-monk, and that was kind of funny, but it kind of pissed me off that they had tattoos here. I've never been a fan of the whole body art thingy.


End file.
